Problem Solving and Risk Management Methodology: Feedback From Experiences With the Use of Taxonomies

Introduction

The introduction of new technologies and incursion into new markets presents organizations with relevant challenges and risks that endanger their effectiveness and efficiency. Given this, methodologies aimed at dealing with problems and their risks, to prevent them and hopefully eliminate them, become that much more important. In this sense, it is useful to have scientific rigor methods that help to define actions geared towards valid and reliable results.

The close relationship between a “problem” and a “risk” can be explained as follows: A “problem” is an unwanted event in the present that may negatively impact the course of action, while a “risk” points to a possible problem in the immediate future. In this sense, Figure 1 describes risk management before developing the problem and risk management after the fact. It shows that detected risks can more easily be prevented in the future.

To address these events, two methods are commonly used by organizations: the Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), and the 8 Disciplines (8'D). The FMEA is characterized by being a simple yet effective procedure for the analysis of potential failures. This process uses a knowledge base to encode and classify the external and internal agents that can cause disruptions and then identifies their probability of occurrence. It also ranks inherent risks in order of importance to find out the priority of the risk and to eliminate or mitigate its impact. After the global review, treatment actions are designed (Qin, Xi & Pedrycz, 2020).

When the problem has already occurred, the 8'D methodology is adopted using a series of eight steps to solve the problem. This methodology allows experts to contextualize the occurrence and provide a temporal solution response to avoid further damage. Afterward, a cause analysis is performed that helps to propose solutions for the problem; then they are implemented and validated. This methodology focuses on identifying the origin of the adverse event based on a root cause analysis (Štofová & Szaryszová, 2017). To maximize poetentialize the two methods, this article proposes a methodological approach as a “feedback” process that capitalizes on an organization's experiences as a knowledge management system based on its members´ expertise. The managed knowledge is composed of the events resolved in the past, also known as training cases. For the reuse of these cases the four stages of Case- Based Reasoning are followed (Schott, Lederer, Eigner. & Bodendorf, 2020). These stages enable organizations to solve a current problem under the reuse of the experience of similar past issues.