How to assign a Leader to respond to Corrective Actions

[jbmx1]

Hi,

I am running into an issue here that I considered to be worthwhile mentioning and discussing in this forum. This company, back since the old days has typically assigned the Quality Engineers the role of creating a CAR (corrective action request), call up a meeting with a business unit group to discuss the actions to take and the analysis involved, wait at an empty room to call up a new meeting, fill out the form to complete the CAR after a couple of failed attempts and then convince the process owners to take the pertinent actions, all the while getting beat up for not meeting the deadline either internally or externally. Needless to say, this has led to a situation where internal CARs are almost non existent and the customer complaints are being handled with very few people involved, and sometimes are not very detailed. In my role as Quality Manager, I am trying to revert this by assigning a responsible leader, not necessarily the QE that can work together with the group and let the QE handle the verification and administration of time, follow up etc..

I got an external training for all the QE, ME and Production Supervisors on Problem Solving expecting them to embrace the true spirit of a Corrective Action process (not in a punitive way but as a mean to improve on areas of our manufacturing process) in order to start with the new system and modifieid the procedure to make it very clear that CARs are not to be responded by QE's but people is still struggling to take on this responsibility willingly.

What is your take on this? I am having a difference of opinion with the Production Manager and I would like to be prepared when we discuss this with him and the staff.

 

[AndyN]

OK, so there are two key issues which you have to address. If you want someone to own a corrective action, the type/size of the problem HAS to be something they see as important. Secondly, if it's important, the management of the process/area affected will give ownership of the action. If your management don't see the need, their people will reflect that, right back at you - hence your current situation.

You don't say what these CARs are to do with. Are they internal audit related?

 

[tnskiier]

Great question! I just signed up for the forum so I can participate. We are struggling with the same issue. A couple of things I am trying:
1) Management decides what corrective actions will be opened, not QA. This is especially the case for internal requests.
2) I am proposing that each manager have an objective on his / her performance goals for on-time completion of corrective actions assigned to the department.

 

[jbmx1]

Andy,

Thanks for your input. Actually the need is for all the Corrective Actions. These two that we are discussing about are customer complaints.

Internal Audits are very clear as to who has to do what as they come out of an audit and there is an agreement reached with the auditee at the closing meeting and the Manager of the audited function has to sign as well. Process related CARs are the issue here. Production Manager claims that all the product is made by production so all the CARs would go to them and I do not agree with it.

 

[Golfman25]

I would put the responsibility on the Department Manager with the assistance of the Quality Department. But I would first make sure that a formal CAR is needed (not all customer complaints are reasonable). First, meet with the Department Manager and discuss. If a formal CAR is required, then let the Department Manager run it, with assistance from QA on such things as problem definition, root cause analysis, etc. As for which department manager, that would depend on the problem. But if your production manager wants them all, then give them to him.

 

[kgott]

Hi,

I am running into an issue here that I considered to be worthwhile mentioning and discussing in this forum. This company, back since the old days has typically assigned the Quality Engineers the role of creating a CAR (corrective action request), call up a meeting with a business unit group to discuss the actions to take and the analysis involved, wait at an empty room to call up a new meeting, fill out the form to complete the CAR after a couple of failed attempts and then convince the process owners to take the pertinent actions, all the while getting beat up for not meeting the deadline either internally or externally. Needless to say, this has led to a situation where internal CARs are almost non existent and the customer complaints are being handled with very few people involved, and sometimes are not very detailed. In my role as Quality Manager, I am trying to revert this by assigning a responsible leader, not necessarily the QE that can work together with the group and let the QE handle the verification and administration of time, follow up etc..

I got an external training for all the QE, ME and Production Supervisors on Problem Solving expecting them to embrace the true spirit of a Corrective Action process (not in a punitive way but as a mean to improve on areas of our manufacturing process) in order to start with the new system and modifieid the procedure to make it very clear that CARs are not to be responded by QE's but people is still struggling to take on this responsibility willingly.

What is your take on this? I am having a difference of opinion with the Production Manager and I would like to be prepared when we discuss this with him and the staff.

I found that getting the process owner involved at the early stage and letting them know what the problem is helps, I would call the person concerned, tell them what the story is, ask them what they think they can do about it, when they can get it done by then I'd put it into the system.

I would send them a number of reminders. This gave me my evidence trial and it helped the process owner to keep on top of the issue to. This enabled me to gain access to them and obtain their cooperation as well.

Not perfect, but better than saying, here grab this and throw it into their lap.

 

[John Broomfield]

Great question! I just signed up for the forum so I can participate. We are struggling with the same issue. A couple of things I am trying:
1) Management decides what corrective actions will be opened, not QA. This is especially the case for internal requests.
2) I am proposing that each manager have an objective on his / her performance goals for on-time completion of corrective actions assigned to the department.

tnskiier,

I am in complete agreement with this approach. Is management keeping the initiative for raising more CARs than the auditors? What are the proportions?

What about the PARs?

John

 

[QCAce]

.......
I got an external training for all the QE, ME and Production Supervisors on Problem Solving expecting them to embrace the true spirit of a Corrective Action process (not in a punitive way but as a mean to improve on areas of our manufacturing process) in order to start with the new system and modifieid the procedure to make it very clear that CARs are not to be responded by QE's but people is still struggling to take on this responsibility willingly.

What is your take on this? I am having a difference of opinion with the Production Manager and I would like to be prepared when we discuss this with him and the staff.

Some things to keep in mind based on issues I've run into in the past:
- If it is not a QE that has "ownership" of the CAR, then I've run into problems with the CAR not being evaluated correctly and CARs coming back with varied/incomplete responses. It seemed that no matter how much training was given, this would always be the case.

- A second thing to keep in mind is that it may not be an ownership issue but more of a CAR process issue. Or more specifically, how CARs are generated and that there may be too many. This was really the root cause of the problems I was having with CAR completion. Realizing that while every NCR will have a disposition, not every NCR needs a CAR. Analyze your NCRs from Production, group them by type, report on the quantities by type by week or month. Then choose to create CARs on the significant few. Once I adopted this process there was much more cross-functional team ownership.