Continual Improvement & Preventive Action Differences

[kapoor]

hello Members
I would like to know the how Preventive Action and Continual Improvement are different from each other.

 

[Tom Harris]

Hi Kapoor

ISO 9000 says: preventive action 'eliminates the cause of a potential nonconformity or other undesirable potential situation'.

I say: PA is anything we do to stop bad things (that haven't happened yet) ever happening.

ISO 9000 says: continual improvement is 'recurring activity to increase the ability to fulfil requirements'.

I say: CI is all the stuff we do to get better at achieving our outcomes.

Other, much finer, definitions will now follow ...

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

I think your definition is quite satisfactory, Tom...

Continual improvement: Improve what you already have...
Preventive actions: Prevent potential problems from occuring...

I might just add that preventive as well as corrective actions are part of continual improvement.

See 8.5.1:

The organization shall continually improve the effectiveness of the quality management system through the use of the qualitypolicy, quality objectives, audit results, analysis of data, corrective and preventive actions and management review.

 

[Tom Harris]

And to add to your excellent and succinct defintions, Claes...

Continual improvement: Improve what you already have...
Preventive actions: Prevent potential problems from occuring...
Corrective actions: Prevent actual problems from reccuring...
Correction: Deal with things that are wrong...

Now, if you had written the standards... !

 

[gpainter]

The most desirable mode for a company is PA. Down the road after a company has been successful at CA, then PA is the word. CA and PA are an essential part of CI. Just look at the standard.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Tom Harris said:

Now, if you had written the standards... !

Who? Me? That'll be the day Just the humble (usually) interpreter, me...

/Claes

 

[gbodry]

Re: Continual Improvement & Preventive action

This is exactly where I get wrapped around the wheel. By continually improving a process, we are by default preventing failures from occurring, aren't we?
My organization is constantly improving process. However, we typically do not assign the improvement as 'preventive' even though it is.
Could Preventive Action be considered related to specific outputs from a process and changes to the process itself be considered Continual Improvement?
I can completely understand Preventive Action as it relates to design, with FMEA et. al, but I have a very difficult time when trying to relate it to Process. Any assistance in clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bev D]

Re: Continual Improvement & Preventive action

And to add to your excellent and succinct defintions, Claes...

Continual improvement: Improve what you already have...
Preventive actions: Prevent potential problems from occuring...
Corrective actions: Prevent actual problems from reccuring...
Correction: Deal with things that are wrong...

This is it in a nutshell. I think I'll get that in a tattoo!

for me the issue is thta we typically translate the need for objective evidence of these things leads to the 'simplest' method for the auditor to understand and QA to 'track': the dreaded form. in my current organization we do a lot of continual improvement, prvention, correction and corrective action activity but most of it isn't on the form that QA must review, approve and track. So, the auditor rarely sees this good work. in fact once we were showing him a great example of a corrective action (Problem Solving of a complex physical problem that was detected when customers started cmoplaining and returning product for service. While the auditor thought we were doing good work, we got a finding because we didn't "issue a corrective action", meaning the form that is listed on our corrective Action procedure.