Seeking 'True' Preventive Action Examples

[Russ]

I am trying to educate our management on the meaning of "true" preventive action. I've been searching for some examples to help show them the way. Does anyone have any examples of "real" preventive action that they can share with me?

[goose]

You are driving home and run out of gas, stranded, walk to gas station, buy gas can and gas. Corrective Action.

You are driving home and notice that gas gage is between E and 1/4. You stop to get gas before you run out. Preventive Action. (you reacted to a trend of the gage moving from Full to Empty)

[Alf Gulford]

Or how about a case where a three-hole molded part is cracking because one feature of the mold is too sharp? For corrective action you create a larger radius on that feature.

However, a very similar four-hole molded part hasn't shown any cracking yet, so you radius the equivalent feature on that as preventive action.

Alf

Some examples of preventive action: training, planning, FMEAs, knowing system and product capabilities and not promising more than either are capable of delivering, maintenance, monitoring processes for indications of failure, poka yoke, & 5s. Anything done to avoid or mitigate a potential problem.

[Russ]

Alf-
I beg to disagree, but what you have with the mold is a corrective action, because it (process) has already happened with another job or part. True it is probably more in the area of corrective action impact, but corrective action none the less. I see how you got there though, we used to think that way too, but with our last audit our eyes were opened and we were forced to look very seriously at our preventive action program.
Thanks for your input

[Alf Gulford]

Russ-
Thanks for the posting, but now you've got me wondering, especially since you infer that a registrar wouldn't consider my example preventive action.

Your point about applying it to processes makes sense, but I'm not convinced that applying PA to individual parts is inappropriate. Are you saying that, for example, establishing a guideline to ensure that future molds have proper radii (affecting the process of design) would qualify as PA, where simply fixing something that already exists, even though you're preventing the potential problem from showing up, would not? I can kind of see that. In fact, as I write this, I'm agreeing with your original statements more.

One other comment, with all the debate over CA vs PA, the registrars I've dealt with seem to be happy as long as you're doing something/anything.

Alf

Corrective Action = Reactive
Preventive Action = Proactive
This helps me to understand the difference.

I have part numbers 1,2,and 3 that each have a four cavity die to punch out tree sizes of rubber gaskets.

All dies were put into production on the same day.

On the third day of production we notice that die number 1 is starting to produce oversized gaskets but dies 2&3 are running within expected limits.

Die #1: We do corrective action and find that the punches we used need to be made of harder steel. We run the new "harder" punches and everything is dandy.

We look at each other and say, we don't want this to happen with dies 2&3 even they are running fine. Let's use the new punches that we got for die #1 in the other dies. Preventive Action.

It doesn't matter what the driver is, if it has not already happened it is a preventive action.

What hepls me is this:

Corrective action: Already happened.
Preventive action: Hasn't happened but leans toward product.
Continuous improvement: System/process related.

I think the finest line to walk is that between preventive action and continuous improvement, but that has been covered many times in this forum.

ASD...