Mohammad Zaid

http://iso-qms.blogspot.com/

Understanding Correction, Corrective Action and Preventive Action

These three words are very ambiguous in their meaning and are always the source of confusion for beginners. Very often Corrective action and Preventive action are used in the same sense by many people. Well there is a very fine difference between all these terms and it is very simple to differentiate as long as you understand the terms clearly.

According to the ISO 9000 Quality Management System Fundamentals and Vocabulary, the following are the definitions. Preventive Action: Action to eliminate cause of potential nonconformity or other potential undesirable situation. When we look at the definition, the word to be observed is POTENTIAL. That means problem has not occurred yet. For example, to avoid the breakdown of cutting tool on lathe. Proper angle, speed of rotation, feed parameters are maintained. Sometimes CNCs are used instead of manual lathe to avoid any problem or potential failure of machine or work piece.

Mohammad Zaid

http://iso-qms.blogspot.com/

These all measure which are taken in advance in anticipation of any potential failure that can occur, are called preventive actions. A risk management process is also a good example of preventive action. Assessing the impact and likelihood of a risk occurring and taking action to prevent occurrence is preventive action. Corrective Action: Action taken to eliminate the cause of the detected nonconformity or other undesirable situation. Correction: Action taken to eliminate a detected nonconformity. When we look at the definition, the word to be observed is DETECTED. That means problem has already occurred. For example, cutting tool of lathe machine breaks down because of improper feeding of work piece. The action to be taken in this case has to be in two parts. Correction: Remove the cutting tool and replace with new one. However this does not solve the problem. The next action needed is corrective action: Find the root cause which has lead to the problem of tool failure and eliminate the cause. The cause may be failure in any of moving gears, change in motor RPM, and misalignment of tool with respect to work piece or combination of these. The problem can only be solved only if all the causes are eliminated. Strictly speaking ISO 9000 distinguishes preventive action from corrective action by noting that preventive action is taken to prevent occurrence as opposed to recurrence which characterises corrective action. Simply put, corrective action is based on a non-conformance event that has happened in the past. Preventive action is based on preventing a non-conformance event in the future.

Procedure Requirements
ISO 9001:2008 makes it clear that a procedure is requested for corrective action and also a procedure is required for preventive action. This could be a single document or separate documents as ISO 9000 does not specify it. However it is recommended to make separate documents to avoid any confusion in these approaches.

Mohammad Zaid

http://iso-qms.blogspot.com/

For A rticle on Q uality visit my blog http:/ / iso-qms.blogspot.com/ Link to Previous A rticles
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