A carefully structured enquiry aimed at identifying the “real” cause of a problem or a disservice, along with the actions required to eliminate it.
The analysis of root causes is a methodology applied to the study of causative factors leading to an adverse event, or some kind of accident, based on an organisational concept of error.
This analysis does not limit itself to identifying the error or the factors closest in time to the event, but sets out to analyse the entire process leading up to the generation of the event.