How to Determine Root Causes
Once a winery has identified specific areas to focus on for improvement, they must investigate why inefficient water use is taking place and why materials are entering the wastewater stream.
One approach to determine root causes is to continually challenge the status quo by asking the question “why”. The objective is to uncover behaviours, actions, inactions, or conditions that are leading to unnecessary water use or wastewater loading.
It is helpful to conduct the root cause analysis with employees to get their insight into specific aspects of winery operations.
Example: Determining Root Causes in a Sample Winery
The winery was interested in understanding why so much more water was used to clean the cellar floors compared to the floors in the production room.
The winery brought together their employees to investigate why this was the case. They ended up identifying two root causes.
