C/A (Corrective Action) not closed in a timely manner

[Eloy Gomez]

We will have our AS9100/ISO surveillance audit in less than a month. We have about 20 open corrective actions that belong to upper management including the CEO that are past due. I have tried just about everything to get upper management to play ball but unless is customer driven they focus in on the flavor of the day not on maintaining their QMS.

Since upper management only see dollars -- what are some ideas I can put together to put a presentation to upper management so they can see how important closing and implementation of C/A's is?

Thanks in advance. P.S. most of this C/A' came from interna audit and are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand that it will cost them more not maintaining their accreditation not to mention it will take year before they can re-apply.

 

[Jim Wynne]

Re: C/A not closed in a timely manner

We will have our AS9100/ISO surveillance audit in less than a month. We have about 20 open corrective actions that belong to upper management including the CEO that are past due. I have tried just about everything to get upper management to play ball but unless is customer driven they focus in on the flavor of the day not on maintaining their QMS.

Since upper management only see dollars -- what are some ideas I can put together to put a presentation to upper management so they can see how important closing and implementation of C/A's is?

Thanks in advance. P.S. most of this C/A' came from interna audit and are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand that it will cost them more not maintaining their accreditation not to mention it will take year before they can re-apply.

Something is seriously wrong that educating upper management probably won't help. I can't imagine any situation where, in a certified (not accredited) company, there are 20 open CAs that belong to upper management. Furthermore, if there are 20 open CAs that stem from internal auditing against the standard, the ship should have sunk a long time ago. If you can't translate these CAs (or any CAs) into a reasonable estimate of dollars lost, they shouldn't have been written to begin with.

At this point you can't do much except (A) look at the CAs and see whether some or all of them can be reassigned; (B) inform upper management in no uncertain terms that the continuation of your certification depends on timely response and (C) also inform them that you're going to fix the system so that you're not doing internal audits against the standard anymore.

 

[AndyN]

Re: C/A not closed in a timely manner

Since upper management only see dollars -- what are some ideas I can put together to put a presentation to upper management so they can see how important closing and implementation of C/A's is?

Thanks in advance. P.S. most of this C/A' came from internal audit and are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand that it will cost them more not maintaining their accreditation not to mention it will take year before they can re-apply.

I believe you started this! When you say "most of this c/a ...are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand..." you have put them in that situation!

Clearly there's nothing in ISO 9001/AS 9100 that catches their imagination, it's not written in their language or their called the same names as their business processes, so why would they get it. You care going to have to 'translate' it for them, I'd suggest, since it was the internal audit program which painted them into the corner! Sorry to be blunt, but you appear to me to have tied both hands behind their backs and now you expect them to fight?

I'd suggest that you take each internal audit finding and turn it into something that is a value to their business process goals and objectives and why, if it's not fixed, they will end up being off this goal. Then, they may get a bit excited about it. And, please, next time, don't do this again, will you?

 

[brahmaiah]

We will have our AS9100/ISO surveillance audit in less than a month. We have about 20 open corrective actions that belong to upper management including the CEO that are past due. I have tried just about everything to get upper management to play ball but unless is customer driven they focus in on the flavor of the day not on maintaining their QMS.

Since upper management only see dollars -- what are some ideas I can put together to put a presentation to upper management so they can see how important closing and implementation of C/A's is?

Thanks in advance. P.S. most of this C/A' came from interna audit and are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand that it will cost them more not maintaining their accreditation not to mention it will take year before they can re-apply.

Your assertion about upper management is true in majority of companies.I have seen dozens of them.
The most practical way to solve this problem is that the MR should complete all documentation required to clear C/As raised against top management and take their signature.The top management wiil readily sign on blank papers to clear these C/As.
Bosses are bosses they cannot be changed.
V.J.Brahmaiah

 

[Jim Wynne]

Your assertion about upper management is true in majority of companies.I have seen dozens of them.
The most practical way to solve this problem is that the MR should complete all documentation required to clear C/As raised against top management and take their signature.The top management wiil readily sign on blank papers to clear these C/As.
Bosses are bosses they cannot be changed.
V.J.Brahmaiah

That might be an expedient method of closing CAs before an impending audit, but it does nothing to solve the problem. If there are really a lot of unanswered CAs "owned" by top management, there's something seriously wrong with the system. As I suggested earlier, my guess is that the internal audit system that spawned the CAs is flawed.

 

[Richard Pike]

We will have our AS9100/ISO surveillance audit in less than a month. We have about 20 open corrective actions that belong to upper management including the CEO that are past due. I have tried just about everything to get upper management to play ball but unless is customer driven they focus in on the flavor of the day not on maintaining their QMS.

Since upper management only see dollars -- what are some ideas I can put together to put a presentation to upper management so they can see how important closing and implementation of C/A's is?

Thanks in advance. P.S. most of this C/A' came from interna audit and are based on the requirements of the standard. Obviously they do not understand that it will cost them more not maintaining their accreditation not to mention it will take year before they can re-apply.

If the C/A,s truly belong to upper management then those C/A's refer to non-conformance to the system that they authorized (if not designed). So they are in some way infringing the very things that they said they wanted to happen. With such a volume (20) it is obvious that those procedures (or whatever requirement is being infringed) were thrust upon them, as opposed to "agreed" by them. The problem is not with upper management, it is with quality management.

 

[qualityce]

Wow..this is the types of issues I am dealing with. I measure the average time taken to close C/A. The average is 50 days. The arguments I get are we don't have time and time is money.

I do have a related question I would like to pose though.

I have a production manager whose personnel failed to report a nonconformance. There is no evidence that he ever planned to, but I issued a C/A for failing to report quality issues. My question is what is an good rule of thumb to allow production people to report qulaity issues? Right now our rule is immediately. The production manager asked me what does immediately mean. I responded "Now" He wants a definition of what Now means. I think I am going to give him the webster dictionary answer.

Thanks

 

[Jim Wynne]

Wow..this is the types of issues I am dealing with. I measure the average time taken to close C/A. The average is 50 days. The arguments I get are we don't have time and time is money.

I do have a related question I would like to pose though.

I have a production manager whose personnel failed to report a nonconformance. There is no evidence that he ever planned to, but I issued a C/A for failing to report quality issues. My question is what is an good rule of thumb to allow production people to report qulaity issues? Right now our rule is immediately. The production manager asked me what does immediately mean. I responded "Now" He wants a definition of what Now means. I think I am going to give him the webster dictionary answer.

Thanks

The absolute worst thing you could do at this point is go at the production manager with a dictionary. You're trying to deal with problems that are beyond your control. Your priorities and those of the production manager are different, and he's going to do what he feels is in his best interests every time.

The best thing you can do at this point is to sit down with him and discuss the situation. Make sure he understands that your priorities and his have to merge at some point. Listen to him. If your relationship is adversarial at this point, that's the problem you need to work on, not what "now" means. Ask him to help you.

 

[qualityce]

I agree...what I did was discuss the issue with him and got him to agree that there is a potential problem. With that I agreed that we could convert the corrective action to a preventive action. We will as a management team determine the best duration time to allow the reporting of quality issues that will benefit the organization.

Do you know of any documented procedures that detail times for responses for Corrective actions?

Thanks,

 

[AndyN]

Share with us the content of these disputed nc's and we'll identify why you're having such a hard time convincing people to take action...