Interrelationship Diagrams

Identifying Cause and Effect Relationships
(Also known as Relations Diagrams)

Use this technique to unravel the causes and effects of a problem.

© iStockphoto/FredFroese

When you have a problem to solve, it's often useful to identify all of its possible causes, and then to address each of these.

This will be fine in many situations. Sometimes, though, this can be time-consuming and costly, particularly if some of the possible causes will be expensive to deal with.

This is where it's helpful to use an Interrelationship Diagram. These simple diagrams help you map out the relationships between all of the possible causes of the problem. From this, you can identify the most significant causes, so that you can focus on these.

In this article, we'll look at Interrelationship Diagrams, and we'll explore how you can use them to identify the probable root causes of a problem.

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