Contingency Planning

When assessing the risk of a failure mode it is important to have a certain level of control in place. If there is no control then your cross functional team should agree on a recommended action as well as choose a person responsible to follow that action through. A flow plan should be outlined and yes if necessary an assessment of each step of the flow should be fortified with its own risk mitigation. This process can be arduous however if the risk is high it will take some thorough work to reduce that risk. In the case of the gulf oil spill a bunch of ideas were laid out at recommended actions but no-one took the responsibility to validate those ideas. In the case of Toyota's issues earlier this year, I'm sure they had a plan - a thorough plan in their back pocket, however the choice to implement was at the time outweighed by the cost. Now, they have chosen to implement their backup plan via their "SMART" safety plan because the cost of poor quality was directly aimed at their profits.
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Ask the Right Questions

When investigating the root cause of a failure mode be sure to ask the right questions. A simple guide is "who, what, where, when, and why" - aptly named the 5-Ys.
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