Our company is ISO 9001;2000 registered and our third party auditor insists that all customer complaints should be documented using the CA process.
Our view is that customer complaints that are isolated incidents that are considered to be a onetime oversight should not necessarily be captured in the formal CA process. They are still captured on a historical matrix of isolated incidents which is part of our QMS.
My question is a simple one. Is it the intent of element 8.5.2 of the ISO 9001:2000 standard to capture ALL customer complaints in the formal CA process?
Thanks to all who have input in this interpretation of the standard. :applause:

<snip> My question is a simple one. Is it the intent of element 8.5.2 of the ISO 9001:2000 standard to capture ALL customer complaints in the formal CA process?

No. Customer complaints are reviewed by authorized persons and depending on the severity of the complaint (based on pre-established evaluation ctiteria), you decide how and when to move forward with formal Corrective Action. The auditor is not allowed to "demand, advise, recommend, suggest, etc." That's a no-no!

The problem with most organizations is that they do not have well-established problem/complaint/nonconformity evaluation criteria. So they do not know how to evaluate nonconformities for the purpose of deciding on- and initiating formal corrective action.

Stijloor.

Our company is ISO 9001;2000 registered and our third party auditor insists that all customer complaints should be documented using the CA process.
Our view is that customer complaints that are isolated incidents that are considered to be a onetime oversight should not necessarily be captured in the formal CA process. They are still captured on a historical matrix of isolated incidents which is part of our QMS.
My question is a simple one. Is it the intent of element 8.5.2 of the ISO 9001:2000 standard to capture ALL customer complaints in the formal CA process?
Thanks to all who have input in this interpretation of the standard. :applause:

The standard requires CA when "the organization" believes CA is warranted. While 8.5.2(a) does mention customer complaints, the required documented procedure says that actions "...shall be appropriate to the effects of the nonconformities encountered," and that you need to evaluate "...the need for action to ensure that nonconformities do not recur..." (Emphasis added)

The fact that you review customer complaints, decide whether action is warranted or not, and keep a record is enough. Your auditor is wrong, in other words.

Our company is ISO 9001;2000 registered and our third party auditor insists that all customer complaints should be documented using the CA process.
Our view is that customer complaints that are isolated incidents that are considered to be a onetime oversight should not necessarily be captured in the formal CA process. They are still captured on a historical matrix of isolated incidents which is part of our QMS.
My question is a simple one. Is it the intent of element 8.5.2 of the ISO 9001:2000 standard to capture ALL customer complaints in the formal CA process?
Thanks to all who have input in this interpretation of the standard. :applause:

Hello whitey115, and welcome to the Cove! :bigwave:

To answer your question, no, I don't believe it is the intent of 8.5.2 that ALL customer complaints must be captured in the formal CA process.

Our third party (registrar) auditors do not expect to see all of our complaints captured in our CA system, however, they do expect to see evidence that the complaints have been reviewed and determined whether or not a CA should be initiated, which we do.

Hope this helps...

How do you know that "complaints that are isolated incidents that are considered to be a onetime oversight"? Obviously, you are performing an investigation. Investigations are a part of the corrective action process. It is up to you to decide which, if any actions need to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem. Sometimes, no actions need to be taken because, well, lets face it, there is no return. But, you still need to capture the complaint, figure out what happened and why before you can make the decision not to perform any further actions. Simple answer, yes, you need to capture them. Call them whatever you want, but they need to be captured.

A corrective action system is more than just doing action items. You can perform action items all day long and not solve a thing if you don't follow the process.

How do you know that "complaints that are isolated incidents that are considered to be a onetime oversight"? Obviously, you are performing an investigation. Investigations are a part of the corrective action process. It is up to you to decide which, if any actions need to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem. Sometimes, no actions need to be taken because, well, lets face it, there is no return. But, you still need to capture the complaint, figure out what happened and why before you can make the decision not to perform any further actions. Simple answer, yes, you need to capture them. Call them whatever you want, but they need to be captured.

A corrective action system is more than just doing action items. You can perform action items all day long and not solve a thing if you don't follow the process.

The OP said that he is recording "isolated incidents." The question was about whether the formal CA system must be invoked in those cases. The answer is "no." The CA system doesn't have to be used in cases where no CA is warranted, but it might be the easiest way--open a CAR and close it when the investigation indicates that CA isn't necessary. Nonetheless, auditors shouldn't be allowed to make stuff up.

Personally I capture every customer complaint, regardless of the outcome.

It may be that these onetime oversights are coming from the same source.

If you don’t capture it, and document it how can you improve it?:2cents:

Personally I capture every customer complaint, regardless of the outcome.
It may be that these onetime oversights are coming from the same source.

If you don’t capture it, and document it how can you improve it?:2cents:

We capture every customer complaint, too, but we don't open a CA on every complaint. We do, however, review the complaint to see if a CA is appropriate and if so then we open a CA. This is also documented.

Personally I capture every customer complaint, regardless of the outcome.

It may be that these onetime oversights are coming from the same source.

If you don’t capture it, and document it how can you improve it?:2cents:

He does "capture" them. Why do you need to improve something that doesn't need to be improved? If we're to believe the OP (and there's no reason not to) he's talking about outliers that don't merit special attention. Too much time is spent on documenting and "improving" things that don't need to be improved.

In our automotive company such things happen sometimes: The customer calls and complains about a product. The quality engineer goes to the customer's. He investigates and finds out that it's their fault to call it a problem. He convinces the customer that it's not our fault, so the customer then withdraws their complaint. He then returns. All of the time he refuses to call this a corrective action, and always troubles me in having him file a corrective action form (which is quite short in nature). I also wrote in the procedure to start CA for every complaint. My idea here is that you cannot know in the beginning whose fault it is, so I just start a corrective action. Then if it turns out to be our fault, we go on the CA process. If it's not, we close it right away, but don't erase it. I think, if we don't start a file every time, later it may repeat and also details of our first visit, details of the compliant might be lost forever. So I insist to start a file each time a complaint comes, so to make a large database of false and true complaints. If we don't, we will never know how much time is lost struggling with the customer, or how many times we visit them for false-complaints. That's the improvement point in my system. My engineer never accepts this and complains all the time. I know that if I allow him to skip CA filing, he'll write down nothing and later even real problems will be missed. Also customer's complaints may never be proved false (even if it's false) and may stay in their performance charts. Don't you think this will make us look like we're not doing anything for "some" complaints? That's why, I understand the corrective action as a collective term for all actions regarding the customer problems, including going to the customer and convincing them. Because you need to analyse the problem to find out whose problem it is. It is an action, too. I would like your opinions on how to treat my lazy engineer and convince him on my view of the case.

Is it the intent of element 8.5.2 of the ISO 9001:2000 standard to capture ALL customer complaints in the formal CA process?

No. But, ideally, your procedure for dealing with CAs should be such that it is not more work to document a customer complaint through it than through any other method. Developing a separate method to deal with such complaints just seems more complicated than streamlining your CA procedure to capture the incidents and deal with them appropriately.

If we're to believe the OP (and there's no reason not to) he's talking about outliers that don't merit special attention. Too much time is spent on documenting and "improving" things that don't need to be improved.

Outliers always hold interesting info. Yes, it is easier to discard them, baby and all, but with the right system, the OP can learn from them.

Issue-tracking software (Bugzilla, Jira, etc.) and a good CA procedure to go with it, should allow the OP's organization to learn from every incident.

Outliers always hold interesting info. Yes, it is easier to discard them, baby and all, but with the right system, the OP can learn from them.
Issue-tracking software (Bugzilla, Jira, etc.) and a good CA procedure to go with it, should allow the OP's organization to learn from every incident.
You're arguing against a point I didn't make (or try to). You don't know for sure whether an outlier is an outlier unless you know whether there's anything "interesting" about it. The point I was trying to make is that too much time is wasted in mindlessly following an overly rigid CA system when it's often possible to look at something, evaluate it, and move on. We need to stop trying to prevent people from thinking about what they're doing.

In our automotive company such things happen sometimes: The customer calls and complains about a product. The quality engineer goes to the customer's. He investigates and finds out that it's their fault to call it a problem. He convinces the customer that it's not our fault, so the customer then withdraws their complaint. He then returns. All of the time he refuses to call this a corrective action, and always troubles me in having him file a corrective action form (which is quite short in nature). I also wrote in the procedure to start CA for every complaint. My idea here is that you cannot know in the beginning whose fault it is, so I just start a corrective action. Then if it turns out to be our fault, we go on the CA process. If it's not, we close it right away, but don't erase it. I think, if we don't start a file every time, later it may repeat and also details of our first visit, details of the compliant might be lost forever. So I insist to start a file each time a complaint comes, so to make a large database of false and true complaints. If we don't, we will never know how much time is lost struggling with the customer, or how many times we visit them for false-complaints. That's the improvement point in my system. My engineer never accepts this and complains all the time. I know that if I allow him to skip CA filing, he'll write down nothing and later even real problems will be missed. Also customer's complaints may never be proved false (even if it's false) and may stay in their performance charts. Don't you think this will make us look like we're not doing anything for "some" complaints? That's why, I understand the corrective action as a collective term for all actions regarding the customer problems, including going to the customer and convincing them. Because you need to analyse the problem to find out whose problem it is. It is an action, too. I would like your opinions on how to treat my lazy engineer and convince him on my view of the case.

Why start with a full blown corrective action? Why not start with a 'customer complaint" form? Add a box at the bottom for a responsible manager to sign off "This customer complaints does or does not (circle one) need to be escalated to a corrective action".