Root Cause Analysis Newsletter – 30 Years of News

When did the Root Cause Network™ Newsletter Start?

When did we publish the first root cause analysis newsletter? March of 1992. And that makes the newsletter 30 years old! It was originally called the Root Cause Network™ Newsletter.

What was the front-page article of the first newsletter? A Tale of Two Plants. The Word format that I wrote it in is so old that I can’t open it anymore.

Why did we start writing a newsletter about root cause analysis?

Actually, management guru Tom Peters (above pictured in the 1990s) inspired it. You remember Tom Peters … right? The co-author of In Search of Excellence.

He was one of my favorite management gurus at the time. In the early 1990s, he started his own consulting firm and I registered for his newsletter.

After reading his newsletter for a few months, I thought …

“We need to start a newsletter about root cause analysis.”

So in March of 1992, I wrote the first Root Cause Newtwork™ Newsletter and I started sending it to my contacts and TapRooT® Course attendees (around a thousand people). That was the start and it grew from there.

In those days it was a four-page, hard-copy, mailed newsletter. We initially published it four times a year. This eventually increased to once every two months with the biggest distribution in paper form of over 50,000 people.

E-Mail Root Cause Analysis Newsletter

The last paper newsletter was in May of 2014 (above). Of course, by then most of our newsletters were delivered by e-mail. But we decided that we would change to a weekly format with every newsletter delivered by e-mail.

For a while, we changed the name of the e-mail newsletter to the TapRooT® Friends & Experts e-Newsletter but we have now changed it back to the Root Cause Network™ Newsletter.

The newsletter is made up of our best articles from the TapRooT® Blog.

It looks something like this…

What’s In the Root Cause Network™ Newsletter?

Each article is a quick read and we try to put out interesting information on the latest root cause analysis, performance improvement, safety, quality, and equipment reliability information in each edition. Plus, we often write articles about current accidents and incident investigations.

The most clicked-on items in the newsletter are the “President’s Article,” the “Joke of the Week,” the “How Far Away is Death” (picture or video), and the “What Does a Bad Day Look Like?” (picture or video).

You will also find news about the latest TapRooT® Software updates, upcoming public courses, and information about the Global TapRooT® Summit.

Reading the newsletter is a great way to keep up with the latest TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis news. You may even think of it as a refresher for your TapRooT® Knowledge.

Who Is Responsible for Writing and Producing the Newsletter?

Besides running System Improvements, Mark Paradies started the newsletter and writes the President’s Article each week.

Other frequent authors are Barb Carr, Susan Napier-Sewell, Alex Paradies, and a host of others. Emily Pritt produces the weekly YouTube video that is included in the newsletter, as well as, the TapRooT® YouTube Channel.

Anne Roberts performs the weekly editorial work to get everything published on time.

Equipment Reliability Network™ Newsletter

In August, we started a new newsletter called the Equipment Reliability Network™ Newsletter. It is published once a month and, as the title implies, it is about improving equipment reliability.

The Equipment Reliability Network™ Newsletter combines our best articles about improving equipment performance from the TapRooT® Blog.

Are You Getting These Newsletters?

If you are NOT getting BOTH of these newsletters, just drop us a note (info@taproot.com) with your e-mail address and which newsletter you would like to receive, and we will get you registered.

To keep getting the newsletters, you need to click on an article to read at least once a month or you will become inactive by our mailing software (Hubspot).

Thanks to all the readers!