They are the sources of information on which people base their decisions. If the sources are flawed, so will be the decisions that spring from them. It is a commonplace misapprehension that when we fix something tangible, the problem will vanish forever. Even worse, some still believe that witch hunting prevents failures from recurring. Neither is true.
Management is generally satisfied when a physical root has been resolved.
However, this temporarily prevents the failure from recurring. Politics to the fore People are more amenable to spending money on tangible items, such as a motor or a coupling, than on modifying a start-up procedure, changing the specifications on a seal or providing training in proper maintenance practices. The truth is that the physical roots typically cost much more that the latent roots. The hard part about dealing with latent roots is that they are soft issues that deal with human beings. Whenever you delve this deeply into root cause analysis, you can expect plant politics to become a factor.