Corrective actions

Corrective Action Owner receives a linked nonconformance and records the root cause and proposed action. The action has an owner and due date. It can progress through Planned, Approved, Implementing, effectiveness review and Closed. The relationship to the nonconformance preserves which rejected inspection started the work, so an isolated task cannot appear complete while its parent quality issue stays unexplained.

The owner should distinguish an immediate containment step from the action intended to prevent recurrence. The root cause statement and action description are retained on the corrective action record. They give the reviewer enough context to decide whether the change addresses the issue that was detected.

• One linked issue. Every corrective action points to a nonconformance and a named owner.
• Approval before implementation. The action reaches Approved after reviewer decision, then the owner performs the agreed work.
• Separate effectiveness decision. The owner submits implementation evidence for review; another Quality Reviewer decides whether the result is effective.

Agree who approves an action and who can conduct the independent effectiveness check. A reviewer should not simply be the owner wearing another role. Decide what evidence the team retains in the action text and related operating records, and when the completion date is entered. Agree how the reviewer can trace the completed work from the action to the source inspection and later check results.

Decide how due dates are set for each severity and how an overdue action is escalated. The overdue queue is driven by the due date; a closed action with an old due date must be read with its status and completion date before anyone assumes it is still open. The reviewer should use the issue and original inspection to judge whether the action has addressed the failure.

Take a Major nonconformance from an incoming inspection. Corrective Action Owner writes a specific cause, an action that changes the handling of the failed requirement and a due date. Quality Reviewer checks the cause and approves the action. The owner performs it and advances the record through Implementing to effectiveness review with a completion date and retained explanation.

Have a different Quality Reviewer reopen the source inspection, failed check and nonconformance. They test whether the action worked on a relevant subsequent case. If it did, they close the corrective action and parent issue together. If it did not, leave the parent issue active and return the action for more work. The rehearsal tests the decision boundary, not just whether a status control changes.

• Due for effectiveness review — Actions ready for an independent effectiveness decision.
• Overdue corrective actions — Active actions past their due date, with owner and current status.
• Open nonconformances — Parent issues whose disposition remains active.

Use corrective action to rehearse the approval and effectiveness gates, then inspection to disposition to check the original failure.