Recurring Problems Cost More Than You Think — Start Counting Them

The useful part

You | Quality Magazine Management Management The Problem You Already Solved Is Still Costing You Recurring problems cost more each time they resurface — and most organizations have never tried to count how much. Tracking repeat problems and corrective actions helps manufacturers identify recurrence, assign accountability, and improve operational performance. Root cause analysis, manager training, and repeat-issue metrics can reduce firefighting and prevent recurring manufacturing problems.

How it works

• It means the majority of the people responsible for closing issues for good were never actually taught how.
• Teams would add labor, rework schedules, and escalate maintenance until output climbed back up, and then call the matter resolved.
• Ask the same CEO how much leadership bandwidth went last year into re-solving problems that were supposedly already closed, and the confidence evaporates.
• Board's latest CEO research names the top priority for boards and CEOs in 2026 as closing the distance between strategy set at the top and what actually happens on the ground, under real operating conditions.
• Very few can say how many of last year's fires were repeats, or how that number stacks up against a peer running a comparable operation.

What to take from it

Now go back and flag every hour that went into a problem the team had already closed out once before. It starts lower, with a frontline or middle manager who's handed an issue, a deadline, and no real training in closing it out permanently, so the fastest available fix goes in, because a fast fix is what gets noticed. Consider a capital-intensive manufacturing engagement where recurring throughput shortfalls kept getting treated as one-off production incidents.

Example or evidence

• Institute's most recent published figure attaches a number to one slice of it: organizations waste roughly a nickel of every project dollar to poor performance.
• prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-ama-research-reveals-a-critical-talent-development-gap 2.
• pmi.org (2021 Pulse report, PDF) — note: PMI's most recently published figure is 9.4% of project investment wasted to poor performance (roughly a dime, not a nickel, on the dollar).
• Most leaders have never run that second count, and the room usually goes quiet when you ask them to.

Details worth keeping

By Paul Kreis Image credit: ST.art / iStock / Getty Images Plus (Creative #2230989537) August 21, 2026 Need to Know Recurring operational problems increase execution risk, costs, and leadership workload when root causes are not permanently resolved. Pull up last quarter's operating review and count the hours. A fire that gets fought instead of put out at the root doesn't stay out.

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