Corrective and Preventive Action - One Procedure or Two?

Howdy everyone. I am currenty rewriting our corrective action and preventive action procedures and am thinking of combining them into one written procedure. As long as all the components of both are there and there is everything to support it, does anyone see any problems with combining them and having just one procedure instead of two?

You could, and we all had a similar discussion before, so long as the differences are clearly identified and you dont confuse the two issues.

Why would you want to combine the procedures ?

The general idea going around is to try and simplify everything (we have way too many procedures here). So several people (including management) have mentioned combining the two. And everyone knows how things go once management gets an idea.

The reason I ask is because, as you know, both actions stem from different sources, and require different methods - so the actual procedures are not that similar (in my opinion).

That's one thing I've been working on, but the progress is slow. I'm trying to explain the difference between corrective and preventive action to management. They feel that corrective actions can be used as preventive actions as well since they prevent the problem from happening again. It's a vicious cycle.

I think if I keep the two actions seperate in the procedure, I should be able to keep them seperated and clearly defined. If not, I'll have to convince people to change their mind.

I did this in a previous job and didn't have any problem. I had them exist as totally different sections, and included a clear definition for each, including the triggers for each.

Preventive Action

While there have been tons of discussion between CA and PA, I have not seen anything that can help with writing a PA procedure. There are a lot of opinons as to what it is, some very argumentative, but nothing as concrete as a sample download for study. Even the Premium Files here at the Cove touch very lightly on the subject. I want to combine the two because I do not believe an auditor has the absolute proof that what I call Preventive is actually Corrective, or vice versa. My interviews with potential Registrars deliberately asked for what would be the difference. I came away with the feeling that only here in these discussions do we see such insistance that they are totally different. It's a gray area. There are those that say if I have a corrective action for one thing and I look at all different product for the potential of that thing, it is merely an extension of my original corrective action. Then there are those that say Management Review can be classified as preventive action because we look at trends and define actions. Quite honestly, I do not know conclusively what is a Preventive Action. Here's my thought: I go out into the manufacturing areas and look around and invent a preventive action to satisfy that clause. Like, I recommend that all the toolboxes have new wheels put on them because a worn wheel may cause a tool box to tip over and damage personnel or product. I look at the ceiling and have someone inspect it to make sure all the corners and joints are sound. I could do that all day long. All good manufacturing practices are Preventive in nature and I find it difficult to take this clause as something new. If one were to list all the things a company does, a case can be made that they are mostly Preventive. Now, let's mention effectiveness. Well, the roof stayed on, toolboxes remained upright, etc.. Things never happened so we must be effective. When they do, we have Corrective action. Egads.

Yes energy.

We talked on this very subject a while back, and I suggested just bullet pointing everything you do in your QMS as preventive action, as the old 1994 standard stated that was what ISO9001 was all about.

I still have not heard a good argument for not doing that (other than it is a bit of a waste of paper). If PA is analysing trends and taking action then we already do that under the Measure, Monitor, Analyse and Improve section of the standard. If its considering all things before we do anything then it is part of quality planning, where tools like FMEA might be used. It is just not a stand alone clause that needs a procedure - in my very humble opinion.

here's another one

M Greenaway said:

Yes energy.

We talked on this very subject a while back, and I suggested just bullet pointing everything you do in your QMS as preventive action, as the old 1994 standard stated that was what ISO9001 was all about.

Click to expand...

M. There's a few threads where this thing has been produced some strange interpretations. See page 2 of

Seeking 'True' Preventive Action Examples

This topic is worth doing a search on. We have bantered this one around for the past several years. I am amazed at how many variations we get on preventive actions!!