Quality News

Corrective actions

Craig Cochran from qualitydigest.com gives us this good article
When I first got into quality, I really hated verifying the effectiveness of actions taken to correct a problem. After all, I was young and inexperienced. All of the people whose actions I was verifying were older, wiser, and more experienced than I was. Who was I to say that their actions were effective or ineffective? My assumptions were as follows:

• If they said they did something, then they certainly did it.
• Whatever they did was directly related to the problem causes, or they wouldn’t have done it.
• The action must have been effective; they would have told me otherwise.

All of these assumptions had to be correct, because I was working with seasoned professionals, right? Ha! Boy, did I learn a lesson.

People just want to get paperwork off their desks or out of their in-boxes as quickly as possible. Taking actions on problems is one of many responsibilities that people have and, unfortunately, it’s not always top priority. That’s why it’s crucial that action be carefully verified. Verification is not an act of suspicion or disrespect; it’s simply a necessary part of problem solving.



What exactly is being verified? You are seeking evidence that the causes of the problem have been removed or reduced. In a perfect world, each problem cause would be removed. Poof, it’s gone. This is not always possible, though. Sometimes the best you can hope for is a reduction of the causes. The cause is still there, but it manifests itself less frequently or less severely. So the best option is to remove the cause, but the next best option is to at least reduce the cause.

read full text on qualitydigest.com