Managing corrective actions effectively

The latest regulatory requirements are leading companies to develop and place more reliance on their improvement management processes. Compliance bodies require organizations to demonstrate that they are recording all issues, analyzing route cause and taking corrective action.

ISO 14000, AS 9100, ISO 9001 and ISO/TS 16949 all require that a Corrective Action and Preventive Action system (or CAPA system) is in-place and maintained.

Compliant corrective action process

Most organizations will follow the same corrective action steps with or without a defined system in place. Compliance issue can arrise from poor process rigor, inadiquate record keeping or unclear responsibility. The basic corrective action process steps are described below:

Error-proofing the entire CAPA process can help ensure compliance

A CAPA process can be managed manually (via paper forms). This may work for some applications but these systems can quickly become cumbersome and difficult to maintain. The use of specialized software can offer an instant error proofed solution. There are many 'off-the-shelf' solutions avalible, these can offer the following advanatges:

• Robust record keeping
• Compliant out of the box
• Enforces rigor - error proofed

Good corrective action systems will be adopted easily

Well designed systems will be adopted by your teams quickly. The compliance and commercial benefits of being able to solve problems effectivly make investment into a robust corrective action process a good idea.