Toyota's 5 Whys method asks why repeatedly to find the root cause of problems. A loose screw isn't the real issue; the missing maintenance schedule or inadequate training is. Fix the fifth why, not the first symptom.
Chapters
Toyota developed these 5 Whys for their assembly line. And when something went wrong, like a screw was out, they couldn't just say, oh, the screw fell out or was loose. Let's go tighten the screw, put a new screw. They couldn't, they could do that. They had to say, okay, well, why was the screw loose? Right? And then whatever the answer is, well, we, we didn't properly have the proper maintenance schedule. Okay. Well, why didn't we have the proper maintenance schedule? Well, we didn't do the right training. Okay. Well, why didn't we do the right training? And that you had to go 5 levels deep and you had to find the 5th problem, and then you had to fix the fifth problem, not just the first problem, not the surface problem. And that's why Toyotas are so great.