What are the causes of customer complaints?
What causes equipment downtime?
What causes infections in our hospital?
Why does it take so long to close the books each month?
How do we achieve our goal of no lost-time-accidents?
The cause and effect (fishbone) diagram is a great tool for finding the causes of a problem or figuring out what you need to do to reach a goal.
Watch a Video Highlighting How to Make a Cause and Effect (Fishbone) Diagram with SPC for Excel!
Cause and Effect Diagrams and SPC for Excel
Our software, SPC for Excel, makes it easy to construct a cause and effect diagram using Excel. A blank cause and effect diagram is inserted into your workbook when you select the fishbone icon from the SPC for Excel ribbon. The diagram has the major cause categories: machines, measurement, methods, materials, people and environment. These can be changed. There is an “Add Item” button that allows you to add a new item to the diagram and then simply drag the item under the major cause where it belongs. There is also an “Add Sub-Item” button that allows you put causes at a diagonal under the items.