Corrective Action

(Courtesy www.quality-wars.com)

You have been receiving many rejections on your factory floor or at a supplier.  Each time you disposition a fix either through an official "rejection tag" or a simple work around.  But that doesn't seem to be working and the same errors continue, It is time for the next step - formal corrective action.

Corrective action does not need to be punitive.  In fact it works well if there is no blame assigned to any one person or organization.  Solving the problem with an attitude of "our problem that we need to fix" will go along way to getting everyone on board to focus their efforts together.  That is the first step.

With the proper attitude in place you can deep dive into the root cause.  If you are lucky the problem will be relatively easy to diagnose and subsequently develop a plan to eliminate the problem.  Most of the time it's not this easy and you need a bigger effort.

If it's a big problem that involves several groups then management will be aware of it and will give full support.  That is the second key step in developing corrective action - full organizational awareness and commitment.

Once the key players have identified a set of steps to fix the problem it is imperative that the right personnel be given the tasks to complete.  If there is a great deal of inexperience, then the corrective action plan is not effective and could make matters worse.  Aggressive schedules must be developed and followed on time to provide timely closure to the issue at hand.

Once the corrective action plan is implemented, naturally check to see if it solved the issue. Surprisingly many operations don't do this step and become surprised (and panicked) when things don't work out.  With a solid plan developed and proper implementation executed, you can turn attention to the next issue.