In a manufacturing company, corrective actions may arise as a result of customer complaints, audits, or customer visits. They are also often triggered by problems with the product itself. Organizations use various forms and templates that impose a specific set of steps intended to eliminate the problem. A large number of issued corrective action reports makes it necessary to maintain registers, which are usually kept in popular Excel spreadsheets.

The problem is that employees either forget or are unwilling to update these registers. As a result, the Quality Manager or another person responsible for closing corrective actions spends a significant portion of their time sending emails, making phone calls, or reminding responsible individuals. It is also quite common that time pressure forces them to take matters into their own hands and step in for other employees in performing their duties. As one can easily imagine, such a situation—where leaders do not take responsibility for issues identified within their processes—has a devastating impact on the overall quality level of the organization.

Taking these challenges into account, when developing our corrective action management module we focused primarily on:

• transferring responsibility for nonconformities to process owners, who can delegate tasks to their teams
• a clear and structured problem-solving approach based on the widely used 8D methodology, including steps such as problem definition, immediate actions, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and lessons learned
• ensuring the quality of implemented actions through final evaluation of their effectiveness and efficiency
• system-based reminder notifications prompting responsible persons to take action
• the ability to attach evidence confirming the implementation of actions taken to resolve nonconformities
• involving employees from other departments in activities necessary for effective closure of nonconformities

If our thoughts on the module described above have caught your interest, contact us via the contact form. We will arrange a short, free-of-charge presentation of our system’s capabilities—either at your company or online.