I am having a debate with management, the question being do nonconformities ALWAYS result in corrective action or are there cases where a nonconformity DOES NOT result in a corrective action.
Interesting, isn't it, that in the various posts, there is such a diversity of opinion on the subject, with strong opinions for and against? No wonder you are having a debate with your management, Maxwell.
We all know it's possible for Quality Nazis (or whoever) to retreat to their Quality Corner and issue a blanket 'Thou Shalt Issue a Corrective Action in
every instance of Nonconformity'... even if that were decided to be the rule for your organisation or wherever, I'd like to suggest that we consider the outcomes we presumably want and call to mind some of the underlying principles of quality.
I have certainly seen the results of such a black and white insistence on a 100% rule. And one of the problems is that if people think something is stupid or overkill, they will almost certainly work to subvert or bypass the system, actively or passively.
I want good outcomes
and I want to have people 'involved at all levels'. I want improvement - which means I try to bring people in & have them buy in. Then there's an infinitely better likelihood that they'll work with the system, because they had a say in it and they understand the why.
One way of perhaps moving the debate along, or opening it up in a positive way, might be to collect a number of reasonably representative examples of NCs in your particular organisation, plus perhaps a few that are a bit 'outside the norm'. These could be used to have a really interesting discussion with management (presuming they are involved and interested), to see who believes for which example that a CA should be raised - and
why - and who doesn't, and
why.
If you can get from there to a reasonable consensus on when one does and when one might not, or that one always would because of X and Y and Z, then you've got a much better chance of getting to where you want to get to - ie, improving.