Corrective actions

A corrective action belongs to a nonconformance and an owner. It records root cause, the action to take, a due date, completion date and status. That chain keeps the action connected to the inspected failure. A planned action is reviewed before approval; the owner then implements it and submits effectiveness evidence for independent review.

The action’s states are Planned, Approved, Implementing, effectiveness review and Closed. These are work and decision states, not a measure of how many items were fixed. Quality Manager approves the action before implementation. Independent Reviewer accepts effectiveness before closure. The owner who performed the work should not make that final acceptance decision.

• Root cause. Corrective Action Owner investigates the linked nonconformance and records the cause that the action addresses.
• Approved action. Quality Manager reviews the written action and due date before the owner starts work under the Approved state.
• Effectiveness. The owner submits review evidence after implementation; Independent Reviewer judges whether the action worked and closes it only after acceptance.

Corrective action work gives the owner a due-date queue. Corrective action review focuses on records at effectiveness review so the independent decision does not disappear among implementation tasks.

Define who may own an action and who can approve it. Agree the review evidence expected for the kinds of failures the team commonly sees. The root cause should explain the failure seen in the related inspection; the action should identify a concrete change to test. Set due dates at a level the team can actually manage, and decide how the owner signals that implementation is complete.

Agree what independence means for the final reviewer. Access roles alone do not prove that a different person reviewed a particular case. The team should rehearse a case in which the owner tries to close their own action and confirm it stays at effectiveness review until the designated reviewer accepts it.

A nonconformance raised during review of a failed board inspection reaches Investigation. Corrective Action Owner identifies a repeat assembly cause and records a specific corrective action with a due date. Quality Manager reviews the plan and approves it. After implementation, the owner retains the approved action and submits effectiveness evidence. Independent Reviewer compares the evidence with the failure that began the case, then accepts effectiveness and closes the action.

Rehearse a second case where implementation is documented but the effectiveness evidence is absent. It should wait for review rather than close. Rehearse a plan whose root cause no longer matches the inspected defect. The manager should send it back before approval. The linked nonconformance may have its own Disposition and Closed states; closing the action should never erase or silently change the original inspection outcome.

• Corrective action work — Owner, due date and current state for the active action queue.
• Corrective action review — Actions awaiting an independent effectiveness decision.
• Nonconformance queue — The original cases that explain why those actions exist.

See containment and correction and inspection review.