Business crises happen. Responding quickly and efficiently to a nonconformance, deviation, or other crisis can be challenging without preparation and training. Effective crisis response is crucial, as if unchecked, it can impact customers, employees, the environment, or the community.

The response to a business crisis is one of the most stressful aspects of delivering a product or service to a customer. Disruptions in creating a product or service can occur in any setting. Supply chain or warehouse issues can create misshipments, delays, and defects. Software failures (or hacks), incorrectly followed procedures, or incorrect procedures can result in angry customers. On the manufacturing floor, equipment can malfunction, creating product defects and even endangering people.

The goals in any crisis response are:

1. Stop the problem from hurting the customers and the organization.
2. Determine a permanent fix to the fundamental root cause or causes so that the problem cannot happen again.
3. Implement one or more of those fixes.
4. Verify that the fix(es) is(are) successful at preventing the problem.

In the 1980s, Ford Motor Company developed Team-Oriented Problem Solving (TOPS) in 1987 to address “recurring chronic problems.” Ford subsequently changed the name to G8D (Global 8D). 8D is often used to contain and robustly fix issues that lead to crises. It refers to 8 “disciplines” or steps in a crisis response.

The traditional 8D is shown below as adapted from Duffy (2014) and Pruitt (2019):

Discipline	Objective	Description
D0	Prepare for 8D	Determine the key people to contain, understand, and fix the problem.
D1	Select the Team	Carefully describe the problem. This should include what has been impacted and how severe the impact is. The problem and impact descriptions should be clear enough that impacted material can be identified and you can tell whether any solution has fixed the problem.
D2	Problem Definition	Carefully describe the problem. This should include what has been impacted as well as how severe the impact is. The problem and impact descriptions should be clear enough that impacted material can be identified and you can tell whether any solution has fixed the problem.
D3	Containment	Determine how to stop creating the problem and quarantine any product or service that might have been impacted.
D4	Root Cause Analysis	Use Root Cause Analysis techniques to determine the fundamental cause or causes of the problem. Root Causes are such that if they are remedied, in isolation or together, the problem can not recur.
D5	Select and Verify Corrective Actions	Determine Corrective Actions to be implemented and validate that they will fix the problem without unacceptable associated consequences.
D6	Implement and Validate CA	Once the Corrective Actions have been validated, implement them permanently and verify that they have fixed the problem.
D7	Take Preventive Steps	Using the knowledge gained from the root cause analysis and the success of the corrective action, modify other equipment, procedures, and management systems to prevent recurrence elsewhere.
D8	Congratulate the Team	Recognize the work of the team to the larger organization.

The 8D is still used alongside other tools, such as DMAIC (part of Lean Six Sigma) and A3, to solve important problems. However, the 8D is often now used to address crises. As originally envisioned, the problem was ongoing (recurring and chronic), and there wasn’t a need for immediate and dramatic containment. In contrast, crises usually require immediate action.

Most teams have added an “immediate containment” step as the first step in the crisis response. Processing must stop, the impacted material must be quarantined, and the area must be cleaned and made safe. This is especially important if the issue could threaten the health or safety of workers or customers. Don’t wait for senior management authorization and a team to be created to take immediate action.

The response to a significant process or product deviation can involve many people across many functional areas. Front-line workers are involved in the initial response and quarantining of affected material. People responsible for product or service delivery will work to prevent customer impact. People responsible for the process must dig in to determine the root cause and implement corrective and preventive actions. In contrast, a reasonably sized (small) team can work together on a chronic issue.

Since so many people are required to be involved in crisis response, there is a temptation to assign “representatives” of departments, leaving people doing the work without direct contact with other team members. Alternatively, teams can become so large that they are difficult to manage.

I recently read a description of what I consider to be an improved version of an 8D for crises (Ondrej Ďurej, 2024). It allows immediate action and provides a clean and logical division of responsibilities. The original 8D assumed the steps (Disciplines) would be followed sequentially. Different steps can overlap in this version and be initiated before the previous team has finished its activities.

An 8D modified for a crisis response

Discipline	Traditional 8D	Improved 8D	Lead Team
D0	Prepare for 8D	Problem description & extent (what happened, who, and what has been impacted). Is there a safety or environmental issue that needs to be immediately addressed?	Local Team – On the spot.
D1	Select the Team	Immediate action and containment
D2	Problem Definition	Analysis of consequences and extent	Product team – Addressing containment and rework
D3	Containment	Full quarantine of material and equipment. Determination of what remedial actions need to be taken to scrap or rework impacted material.
D4	Root Cause Analysis	Root Cause Analysis	Process owner team
D5	Select and Verify Corrective Actions	Corrective Action
D6	Implement and Validate CA	Preventive and systematic actions
D7	Take Preventive Steps	Validation of actions	Local, Product and Process Teams
D8	Congratulate the Team	Problem closure

The first step, D0, is now a description of the problem. Even in cases where there has been an injury or the equipment is in an unsafe state, a quick assessment of what happened is required to effectively and safely aid the injured and return the equipment to a safe state. It is helpful to have a list of questions to be answered.

• What happened?
• What material, people, or services could be negatively impacted?
• Equipment or software is involved?
• What people are involved (who discovered, responded to, and are responsible)?
• When did it start (this may be revised during Root Cause Analysis)?

In a manufacturing environment, this can often be accomplished within minutes by the people who run and repair the equipment with the support of their supervisors and managers. The determination that a real crisis exists and that a response is needed must be able to happen on the floor with supervision immediately available. Clear documentation about what to do, plus good training, is required for this to be carried out quickly and efficiently.

That same team then determines what immediate action needs to be taken (D1). Often, equipment is put in idle mode, material that has been impacted needs to be stopped at the next sensible process step, and material that is scheduled to be processed in the impacted area needs to be scheduled for an alternate equipment path.

At this point, it is best practice not to fix the problem or equipment but to leave it as it is (except to make the environment safe) for analysis. It is extremely helpful to take photos. These photos can sometimes be critical in determining what happened and can be used to describe and report to the larger organization.

Before D1 is considered complete, the problem statement should be reviewed, and, if necessary, further quarantine material or equipment should be conducted. Material that might have been quarantined but not impacted should be released.

The following steps are taken once more resources are available. The team responsible for D2 and D3 are often responsible for the product or service. They determine what cannot be shipped, what needs rework, what is OK to ship as-is, and what might need to be recalled. To do this, they will need strong support and advice from people on the front line to describe what happened and those responsible for the process to determine rework or scrap options. They need to ensure that all the impacted material and equipment have been contained and that any material and equipment that was not involved has been released.

D3 is a critical milestone for the crisis response team. As a customer, I want to be assured that I won’t be exposed to the problem. As a supplier, I want to know that we have stopped creating defects and that the environment is safe. Depending on customer input, the amount of impact, whether the containment can be (inexpensively) made permanent, and the likelihood of recurrence, organizations may decide not to invest the resources to continue on subsequent steps (D4-D8).

At this point, equipment is often returned to service after inspection and/or adjustments to prevent further impact and processing resumes.

D4 through D6 are owned by the teams responsible for fixing the cause of the problem. The people who own the product or service often want to be involved to ensure the solutions are robust. This work can start even before D1 through D3 are complete. Some root cause analysis (D4) is required to advise the product teams on material or service disposition (D2 and D3).

D4 through D7 are like those in the standard 8D, with some interesting changes. In standard 8D, D6 is “implement and validate corrective actions.” In the new 8D, corrective action is implemented as part of D5, and validation is moved to a separate D7. The validation in the new D7 is now for all the actions in D0 through D6. This includes make-safe activities, rework and scrap, and corrective and preventive actions.

The combined teams own D7 and D8 and can require approval from management. D7, validation of actions, can be delayed for some time to prove that the actions taken have been effective. Validation can include reviewing the product history to ensure that product remediation was successful and reviewing the process history to demonstrate that the problem has not recurred and that no unexpected consequences have arisen. It is useful to schedule validation review and closure several months after D0 through D6 are complete so that it isn’t forgotten. Too often, teams use the initial positive results to close an issue quickly, only to find that the problem recurs.

New information may change the problem description during any step in this process. This is especially likely to happen during product analysis and root cause analysis. If so, updating the documented problem description and evaluating whether the other completed steps must be reworked and updated is essential.

Responding to a crisis efficiently, with a cool head, and a preplanned process is part of quality in an organization. This improved 8D allows immediate crisis containment and effective responsibilities division among the front line, product, and process owners. As the activities are sequential, with the opportunity for some to be accomplished in parallel, this process would be a candidate for automation with a tool like Nintex.

What do you think? Is this a helpful modification of the 8D? Please send me a message!