In writing about how to approach the critical challenges of his day, H.L. Menken said, "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong."

Menken's words from 1920 still ring true today. To develop truly effective solutions, the first step is to properly understand the problem one is trying to solve. Unfortunately, this is not always as straightforward as it might seem. In the context of food safety assurance in a production environment, a superficial analysis of a problem—a contamination issue, a compliance failure, or some other shortfall—may result in a work team mistakenly developing a solution that does not address the real source of the trouble. This "fix that doesn't fix it" represents lost time and effort, and worse, a problem that is still a problem.