Contract Review vs. Preventive Action

[Rockanna]

How many of you have determined that your "Contract Reveiw Proces" is a preventive action?

Our Contract foks do not see this process as preventive in nature.

Once again, we are fighting the battle of PROVE IT.

Sometimes, I feel like I am running head first into a wall

Any insight (our corrections)?

Originally posted by Rockanna
How many of you have determined that your "Contract Reveiw Proces" is a preventive action?

Our Contract foks do not see this process as preventive in nature.

Once again, we are fighting the battle of PROVE IT.

Sometimes, I feel like I am running head first into a wall

Any insight (our corrections)?

Rockanna,

Personally, I think that taking an order and making sure that we have it right, is a stretch attempting to classify it as Preventive Action. Realizing that Preventive Action is one of those requirements that is open to interpretation, there are plenty of other areas that you can apply it to. Mgt review, Quality Audits, CA, Purchasing (Supplier Evals), etc.. Watch that head banging.

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Hi Rockanna,

Making certain that you have the ability to fulfil the customers requirements before you accept the order could of course be considered to be a preventive action. You could also consider it to be one of your “normal” processes. Anyway, you decide what is to be considered preventive action in your company.

We have elected to regard it as a part of our normal processes.

Now, how about going through the contract review process in search for improvement potential, and take action when you find such potential? That action would be truly preventive and I cannot see anyone arguing with that... I guess what I'm really saying is: Pick your fights. That headbutting is harmful

/Claes

[CarolX]

Hi Rockanna,

We don't consider contract review for repeat orders to be preventative action. But we do consider it part of the process when we develope a new part. We have a checklist we go through to identify potenial problems during production.

Just another way to skin the ISO cat.

CarolX

[howste]

Just because it's a normal part of your business operation doesn't mean it can't be considered preventive action. Automotive (and other) companies also use FMEA as a normal part of the way they do business, and the tool is one of the best ways to identify preventive actions I'm aware of.

The preventive action requirements include identifying potential problems, potential root cause analysis, and corresponding actions. If you are doing all of these, why not take credit for it? If you're not identifying potential root causes, then you definitely can't count it though.

[Al Dyer]

A robust contract review system clearly fits in with the definition of preventive action:

Actions taken to eliminate causes of "potential" nonconformities or other undesireable situations in order to prevent occurance.

Contract review can't be classified as continuous improvement or corrective action (obviously).

In the case of an ongoing/blanket order the contract only needs to go through a review if there is a change proposed (or yearly review as required) to a contract.

Al...

[noboxwine]

Preventive Action: Actions to prevent the cause of a potential nonconformity or other undesireable situation.

Survey says: YES----Contract Review, if used correctly and in the spirit of adding value to the organization, does indeed do exactly this.

[Mike S.]

Preventive Action: Actions to prevent the cause of a potential nonconformity or other undesireable situation.

By this ISO definition, IMO contract review is a PA, at least as we do it.

How do you do it? Why are you doing contract review? What kinds of problems or potential problems do you "catch" during CR? Do you act on the findings you "catch" to prevent something "undesirable" from happening? If yes, isn't that a PA?