Corrective Action

Corrective Action is an improvement or series of improvements to an Organization’s business processes and procedures to correct the root cause(s) of a non conformance and to prevent their recurrence.  They are the mechanism that drive continuous improvement. To ensure they are effective they need to be based on a systematic root cause analysis and evaluated after implementation to confirm they had the desired impact.

What You Need

1. A Quality Management System (QMS)

Business processes to manage quality in the organization and in work product delivery.

2. Corrective Action Report

     A way to efficiently and consistently document corrective actions.

3. Corrective Action Register

A log of identified corrective actions.

4. Non-Conformances

The original problem that led to the corrective action being developed.

5. Data Sources

Sources of other data to dig deeper around where the problem originated.

6. Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

Drill in to get to the heart of what went wrong using a root cause analysis method like 5-Why.

7. Improvement Actions

What you are specifically doing to improve your processes.

8. Effectiveness Evaluation

How you are following up to confirm your improvement actions had the desired effect.
Corrective Action Register

The table below is an example of what a corrective action register may look like:

Anatomy of a Corrective Action

The form below is an example of what a corrective action report may look like:

1.  The general details of the corrective action. Identify any related NCRs, when it was evaluated and when it was closed out.

2.  Describe the RCA method and the ultimate findings – what came out of it leading to the actions.

3.  What are you doing – the actual business processes you are changing and what you are changing.

4.  How you are evaluating that the actions had the desired effect on the business processes.

5.  Who actually evaluated the corrective action’s effectiveness.

6.  What objective evidence was actually reviewed.

7.  Your effectiveness evaluation may result in further actions to be taken to correct the process.
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