Are Customer Requests for Alteration to Product Corrective Actions?

O

Obstacle3

A customer said "can you please update the template for such and such a document to now include X".

How should I log this in the action request register?

Corrective action, Preventive action or improvement opportunity?

Or is this just your run of the mill day-to-day stuff?

The reason I considered logging it is so the task is tracked through to completion or else it might not ever happen :)
 

harry

Trusted Information Resource
Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

Corrective action, Preventive action or improvement opportunity?

Neither one of these.

"can you please update the template for such and such a document to now include X"

If it is a document, then the document change note (if you do have one) will be more appropriate. Just logged them as customer instruction or request for changes.

I believe there is no fix answer - up to your creativity. What has to happen is to log it somewhere and flow it down to the people who need this information for further action.
 
Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

Neither one of these.
I'm not so sure... It depends on what kind of document we are talking about, the alteration and the reasons behind it of course:

If for instance a checklist lacks an important step, and this has caused problems it could clearly be corrective. If no problems have occured (yet) it could be preventive.

If it does not solve any current or potential problem but somehow improves something... surely it could be an opportunity for improvement?

/Claes
 

harry

Trusted Information Resource
Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

It depends on what kind of document we are talking about, the alteration and the reasons behind it of course:

A customer said "can you please update the template for such and such a document to now include X".


Obviously, we are looking at things from a different perspective. I see it as a customer request/instruction for change where the product is the document whereas you look at it as a form of complain for some system documents.
 

jerry_Malaysia

Quite Involved in Discussions
Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

A customer said "can you please update the template for such and such a document to now include X".

How should I log this in the action request register?

Corrective action, Preventive action or improvement opportunity?

Or is this just your run of the mill day-to-day stuff?

The reason I considered logging it is so the task is tracked through to completion or else it might not ever happen :)

When i first read your message, I thought the "template" is referring to some kind of survey that customer wanted you to reply. If that is the case, I think logging is not required.

If the "template" consist actions or steps that the customer expect attention and actions from you, it may be consider as preventive action request, corrective action request or improvement opportunity according to harry and cleas post.

:2cents:
 
O

Obstacle3

Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

Thanks for the responses!

Sorry for the ambiguity.

To clarify, the document is the product. The product we produce for the customer is a schedule. he provides us with a specification, we try and meet the requirements and negotiate with him where we can't.

When all is agreed we publish the final schedule on a document which is what he uses on the day of operation to do his work.

The range of information required in this document is per a template we have here. The customer would like a new column to be added to a section of the document to add information that is currently given to us on his specification but we have never previously had a need to include on the final schedule document we provide him with.

Its not a corrective action as far as I see it, because it hasn't caused a problem and doesn't require root cause analysis, at least at our end. Possibly at his end though.

Preventive action, im not so sure that it is either. It will help the customer, and from his point of view this information may prevent one of his processes falling over, but for us I don't think it is preventive.

I am thinking maybe improvement opportunity, on the basis that it is a brand new requirement that has not been identified previously and provides a tangible benefit for the customer. But at the same time it hasn't got a great deal to do with our Quality Management System, other than increasing customer satisfaction, meeting customer requirements etc. I guess.

Any thoughts?
 
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harry

Trusted Information Resource
Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

Thanks for the clarification. I had the benefit of remembering what business you were in and hence had a better guess.

In my opinion, it could be a corrective, preventive action or OFI for your customer (depending on situation) and it would be beneficial to them. For you, it should have nothing to do with your system and your duty is to make sure that the changes are communicated to the relevant people who prepare the schedule and the request is recorded (in case there are disputes in future).

On the other hand, the lesson learned will be helpful for you to advise your (other) customers in future.
 
O

Obstacle3

Re: Quick one - Are customer requests for alteration to product corrective actions?

Marc Elsmar, if you are reading this you need a "thank all" button so one can thank everyone on the thread!

This is where I get lost with all of this QMS stuff, ive gotta say.

Is the corrective & preventive action component suppose to be about the QMS business management system processes or the processes used to develop the outputs of the business?

Can I roll out some examples and you tell me whether they are corrective actions or not:

1. A customer contacts us because the product we provide them doesn't contain information THEY require and it has caused a problem for them and downstream even though we never previously knew of the requirement to produce this information (btw in my context a "customer" works for the same organisation...our section is individually certified..we are all working for the same output though)

2. Evidence of product conformity (records) is not being manged per the documented Records Management procedure, though it has never caused a problem!

3. There are no style/format guidelines in place for developing a certain type of document (product) that we output, however, nobody who recieves the document has ever complained about the format of it because the content is what they are concerned with as long as it is readable.

4. People have modified and created their own version of a template, however, again the customer doesn't have any issues with that as long as the content is correct

5. The KPIs related to the QMS quality objectives are not actually being checked.

Now to give you an insight as to where I am coming from...the guy that did my job before me walked around with a ruler measuring the margins on the documents (products) we output.

The customer never had an issue with the fact there was some variance from document to document. What they wanted to be standard was the content of the document. If a schedule request was met in a certain way one week, they wanted it to be met the same way the next time. They dont care about logos, font sizes etc.

This guy walked around measuring things, despite the fact that there was no stnadards in place for how to arrive at the output...eg what is the process for renegotiating when a customer request cant be met, who are the people that need to review the "draft" versions of the scheduling documents (products) we output, why do some people get a hard copy of the product but not recieve fax notification of alterations etc etc. He willingly it would seem ignored all of the process inefficiences and chose to focus on the secondary things...in my view they come later.

To me the value of this whole thing is this. If there is a problem, I can register it, assign it to an owner, develop and action plan, track that action plan all the way until it is completed...reporting to management weekly on the status of each thing.

We have managed to bring in some major changes to the processes that have had huge benefits...the reality is though I have been re-engineering the processes, not the actual process owners due to a number of reasons.

Am I totally out of the ballpark here?

This example I am giving you...the reason I want to log it and make an action plan for it is so that it happens. Otherwise, it will get sent to the process owner to fix on an email and it won't happen.

Am I using this framework the wrong way here? It seems to be of benefit the way I have been using it, but who knows what an external auditor will say because I am not walking around with a ruler looking at pagemargins I am trying to fix and standardise the actual processes!
 
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