Life happens. Deal with it.

In todays world, a business can and will not survive with the position provided in your response. Remember there is 1 lawyer for each 100 of us. Letting little mistakes reach the customer can put you out of business regardless of the cause.

The Chinese drywall issue, now a national issue. Yes, someone thought they could save some money and now they are going out of business or will have little or no profits for years. I know of a major company who moved their motor manufacturing off shore and "things happen",yes 10,000 motors were shipped without lubrication of the bearings. Imagine, going to the field to replace 10,000 motors to keep your best customers happy. The cost of moving off shore will take years to recover in the savings. Yes,the same could have happened domestically, but most large companies have controls to prevent such issues. To most clients the perception means more than anything else.

Why do people select one car model and company over another if they are all the same, junk? PERCEPTION.

Your comment would suggest, "just make the parts and we can sort out the good ones to use". What a waste of resources.

Ed E Author

Preventive action evolves from Corrective action.

Preventive action evolves from Corrective action.

... or from anticipation.

(EDIT: after I posted the above, I realized that the product of anticipation is Planning, not Preventive Action.)

When designing OEM equipment, I like to have a plan "B" in my back pocket...... That is unforeseen preventive action.

I picked this blog to make a general comment.

I knew that this subject would create some discussion, but not to the extent that it has, thanks to all of you. One question for all to ponder! What do you think the authors of the ISO 9001 standard were trying to accomplish by having a Preventative Action section in the Standard? They didn't they stop with just a Corrective Action requirement?

Ed E

I agree, but preventative action can come from experience and knowledge. Many of the decisions made for example in manufacturing come from text books. Example, when bending plate, reading books on forming will tell you that bending with the grain can cause cracking,while bending across the grain prevents or minimizes cracking at the bend. Thus factory procedures need to be defined to make sure that the parts are cut so the bends will be across grain not with the grain.

Welding books and experience gained 50 years ago and studied in the lab proved that high strength steel needs to be welded using low hydrogen welding rod key heated until used to prevent hydrogen migration to the grain boundaries resulting in time cracking. Yes, there was failures and studies, but the information was published for all to read and use to prevent product failures and potential serious failures years in the future. Factory and field procedures, welder training and equipment must include providing rod ovens to keep the 70,000 tensile rod warm before use and a periodic measurement of the ovens maintenance of the necessary temperature.

I view these as Preventative Action, not Corrective Action. Yes, some of you who are knowledgeable would say, "this is just common sense".

I agree with your comment if non-conformities and subsequent corrective actions are documented for FUTURE use by others within the organization involved with ALL processes from order development through installation and in some cases the life of the product. We must also include redesign and an process improvement.

ASQ states," Preventive Action determines and eliminates the causes of POTENTIAL non-conformities to PREVENT occurrence. Corrective Action eliminates the cause of nonconformities to PREVENT recurrence."

Ed E

1. Is the father's action of picking up the spilled nails, preventive or corrective action?

→ This is correction. correcting a problem. not a corrective / preventive action.

1. Is the father's action of putting the nails in a plastic jar and building a rim around the storage shelf, preventative or corrective action?

→ Putting nails in plastic jar is also a correction. But building a rim around the storage shelf is corrective action.

1. Telling the children to not slam the service door: preventative or corrective action?

→ It is corrective action.

1. Would building a storage cabinet with the children one month rather than bird houses be considered corrective action or preventative action?

→ Invalid

1. Would building a storage cabinet with a door and lock for the supplies (before building the first bird house with the children) be preventative action?

→ This becomes the preventive action if the father identifies the potential risk that the nail box will fall down (before it actually fell down).

For me, anything done after the accident is corrective action. Had the dad put these measurea in place before, they would have been preventive.

I agree with your response. If the family moves or the father tells friends of his experience and any of them build a storage cabinet for their garage to prevent a similar experience, I would say for them it would be Preventative Action.

Ed E

I agree with the next blog response, all are corrective action, but to increasing degrees of investment and corrective action. As the next blog stated, "had the father built the storage cabinet before storing nails in the garage and his objective was to prevent nails from being used while he was at work by his wife or the kids and/or preventing them from accidentally spilling on the floor regardless of the cause,I would consider this Preventative Action. He may have experienced the same issue when he was a boy and his preventative action was based upon experience.

Ed E

Failure has already occurred, therefore all of them are corrective actions. Preventive actions are a result of brainstorming about the potential failures.

FMEAs are useful tools for identifying preventive actions. This practice requires a high level intellectual atmosphere in a company so that people care about the use of this time consuming studies.

I disagree somewhat. (Maybe not at all if I am misinterpreting your statements.) ISO 9000 stresses Process focus at all levels. The bird house is an output of a process. Nails are an input. Proper work environment (free from nails on floor) is an input. Training of children is an input. The materials, the plans, the working instructions, the tools, etc are all inputs.

What I am trying to say is "resource management" is a process input, "door training" is a process input. Controlling these inputs is part of controlling the process.

As of this evening there have been 14 comments posted. I picked this one from those submitted to respond to based upon my position on the subject as author. I battled for years on the difference, believing that Preventative focused on preventing a problem from occurring using knowledge and data. FMEA is one tool that can be used in a new design. The design incorporates changes to prevent past field failures. Service expense analysis can also be used to redesign a product so the next generation does not see the problem recur. Just heard about a floor mat that caused a car to speed up to 100 mph. We have heard of several auto recalls related to floor-mates contributing to unexpected acceleration. Recalls are corrective action, preventing this from occurring through design before it ever happens is Preventive Action,my opinion.

Yes, this response deals with the product. One response talked about other aspects of Preventative Action, procurement, manufacture, assembly, test, field trials. Data collection and analysis of problems all need to be used in re-design of new product design and all the process aspects that are in the chain from the customer order,manufacture, procurement to product start-up.

Ed E

I worked in the ISO 14001 realm.

This is the simple version which we learned through our training:

Corrective Action: is correcting the problem found out through inspection.

Preventive Action: is the process to prevent corrective actions from occurring again.

ISO requires that corrective action prevent a problem from every happening again. Preventive to prevent it happening in the first place. In Risk Management lingo, Preventive Actions are used to mitigate Risks, Corrective Actions are used to address issues.

I disagree with you first statement. A corrective action is used when an issue is sited. In my world if lets say bmps are installed in correctly at a job site a corrective action is issued with a 7 day correction period to fix it. A the end of the year I get together with all the job supervisors go over the corrective actions that occur the most and decide on a preventative action so that they do not occur in the future.

And during that year, how many more incorrect installations have wasted money that could have been spent on increasing the company's profits, raising the workers wages, invested in R&D, etc.? You may disagree with my statement that a corrective action must prevent future occurances, but this is the ISO9001 and AS6100 definition and intent. These are both industry consensus Quality Standards.

Corrective action: fix the immediate problem ie repair leak. Preventive action: are plans made from corrective actions to prevent the problem from occurring again. In other words a plan to stop it from happening again. i.e. improve the maintenance procedures. These are definitions directly from an ISO training guide.

I am glad to hear the words "Risk Management". I do however believe that to have effective - risk management- the team must provide the leadership of an organization with data (potential failure rates, cost for repair, lost business,etc.) so that they can make a sound measured decision. As I responded to another blog, data needs to be collected and managed in a way that allows the team to make the correct business decision. The issue, data is not frequently collected and managed so that good decisions can be made.

Having had a long industrial career before consulting, I saw it all. In 1990 a cost reduction was initiated when a control was changed to lower the BOM cost. A year later the control was changed back to the prior more expensive control because of failure rates. It is now 2000 and the engineering team has changed with the knowledge now in retirement. We need a cost reduction...lets change the control, we can reduce the BOM cost. No data, no FMEA, no one to say were tried that in 1990. You can guess the outcome.

Ed E

I agree, the issue however with most organizations is that they do not establish systems to gather the repeat problem data and us it for analysis.

The team that I managed monitored field failures for all service calls, measured service part purchases against unit design sequence. Failure trends that exceeded 1% resulted in a field alert to all sales office. Based upon their input and continued monitoring with Engineering kept in the loop at times resulted in company paid retrofits of all units in the effected design sequence.

The biggest issue was cost reductions to designs where experience was not available, limiting the ability of the Quality, Technical Support and Engineering to anticipate failures and initiation of Preventive Action.

Major design changes were addressed with initial laboratory testing and field trials at offices with customers willing to participate where long term relations existed.

Thanks for the comment, though my response got a little off the subject of the comment. Your response is good but deals only with one aspect of the entireequation of a products or services introductions use of Preventive Action.

Ed E

You are correct in saying my response addresses only one aspect, but this is a field of many aspects. To cover them all would be quite a task for one or two paragraphs, so I guess we have a discussion instead.

Most of what folks are citing as corrective actions are instead mitigative actions. That is, an action taken to make the product suitable for the customer's use. Preventive and Corrective actions address the process which produces the product, with the intent of 1) never delivering a product which is not suitable for the customer, 2) making the production process more predictable, 3) reducing risks to all the stakeholder, including customers, employees, shareholders, the general public, 4) increasing the viability and profitability of the organization.

Beta testing or customer-in-the-loop design and development is just another way of gathering data for the actions taken to prevent the recurrance of existing problems (corrective actions) and those to prevent the ocurrance of potential problems (preventive actions). In either case, the emphasis is on Continuous Process Improvement.

I like and appreciate your comments. The issue is continuous improvement learned by experience.

At times we know there will be failures and the only solution is duplication of resources. Airplanes might be an example. I once visited a chip mfg. where all supporting resources, HVAC and electrical were 100% duplicated in the fab. Electric power from two different power companies. 16 chillers where only 8 were needed to cool the fab on the hottest day.

Not being able to control(prevent) failures, Preventative Action was expensive duplication, why, the fab produced a $100,000.00 in chips each minute making duplication cost effective.

My experience has been that in many organizations, the cost of Preventative action to management is not cost effective, FMEA, QA, ISO, Laborators, end of line run testing, training to mention several. My feeling is that when management looks at costs of prevention vs cost of rework, delays, lost clients, field returns, recalls etc, the are not measured against the benefit of Preventative Action.

Ed E

1. Both - Corrective as in picking up the nails to restore them into a controlled state and preventive in that the action if executed without error prevents damage from the nails to ambient equipment and/or personnel.

2. Both - Corrects improper and unsafe storage of the nails and prevents the same incident from occurring in the future.

3. Both - Correcting improper destructive behavior of the children and if direction is followed, preventing damage to the door and other ambient items.

4. Both - Corrective by providing the appropriate/correct method of storage for the items and prevention in that if properly contained and stored, slamming of the door and/or other incidental behavior will not adversely affect the materials being stored.

5. Preventative - Provide correct, safe storage and an effective means of controlling access thereby preventing uncontrolled conditions of storage.

I guess it needs to be stated for the purpose of the question that we are looking at an already functioning system.

Corrective action: I probably ought to go round up the cows before we close the barn door.

Preventative action: Lets close the barn door before the cows get out.

In either case above, the problem is not when the door got closed but why the barn was not designed with an automatic door closer.

AS engineers, we are often challenged to see and head off problems before the whatever is even built. These inherent design alterations are know by different names depending on your field and country but they are simply engineering controls that eliminate a problem before the question of preventative or corrective is even valid to ask. This fact, to me, is why I have a job.

Example, Foot traffic flow in a laboratory. If I design the lab so that the walkway from the entry door to the office crosses the pathway of the person loading and unloading the autoclave I consider this a unsafe design and move either the door or the autoclave so that foot traffic does not cross a "hot path" thus eliminating the need for corrective or preventative actions since the hazard was eliminated in the design phase.

Its why i get the "big bucks" ROFL!

1) ...picking up the spilled nails..? This neither a preventive or corrective action. ISO9001 8.5.2 Corrective action is taken to prevent recurrance of a problem. 8.5.2 Preventive action is taken to prevent the occurance of a problem. Note both are actions taken to assure a problem does not happen in the future.

2) ...plastic jar and ...rim around the storage shelf...? Corrective by definition.

3) ... not slam the service door? Corrective by definition

4) ...building a storage cabinet...? Corrective by definition

5) ...building a storage cabinet...before building the first bird house...? At this time, no problem has occurred, so Preventive by definition.

In any case, the most important step, and the one most often overlooked, is that, whatever the action taken, it must be re-examined in the future to determine if it has been effective.

The real challenge is to define and consistently use the terms so that we do not argue with words having different meanings!

We learn most from our mistakes. That experience helps us to produce better designs to prevent recurrence of those previous mistakes. Any action (corrective or preventive) after the first nail is driven is either because every potential cause and effect (door slamming) was not exhaustively explored ($$$) or the process was not followed (nails not locked away when job is done.)

So far I havent seen anyone asking the question what the incident was. What actually happend is that the tyre of the car was punctured. What was the Root Cause of it???

This has nothing to do with the making of Birdhouses.

You can only define preventative and corrective actions towards a cause of a problem.

Lets define the puncture of the tyre the problem (and we are lucky we are not talking about a serieous accident here). What would the cause be???

I'd go for having a jar of nails in an unsafe storage condition. (Open to discuss this!)

From this premesis:

1. Picking up the nails is Corrective! No it is not preventaive even this way you can prevent the next puncture of the tyre!

2. As I would say the dad put a rim around the shelf to PREVENT the jar to fall off again. Easy! He makes the storage save! Preventative! Will never happen again.

3. It is prevention, but it was not the cause! It was a contributing factor

4. this is not even close to be considered. No connection with the case.

5. Well it looks like it is a preventative action now, but since the incident already occured it is a moot point to discuss. If they build it now it is preventative.

Now you can jump at me!

Cheers IS

I have received a couple interesting replies by folks who are not registered and I am not able to reply. Example is reply # 29.

The comment, "the issue has nothing to do with making Bird Houses"; TRUE. I also liked hearing, "What is the root cause", Asking why five times as we heard in the old days and in some organizations yet today.

The purpose of telling the story was to set up the actual problem, a flat tire caused by a nail that was not noticed on the garage floor by the father or mother that ended up puncturing the tire. Flat tires are no fun, especially when they are not found until the tire is flat. My good friend who owns a repair shop says, "you cannot believe the number of tires we fix every week". I got the story idea when I found a nail in my SUV tire about 3 weeks ago.

So, yes, the problem has nothing to do with making bird houses", I agree.

My opinion is that preventive or preventative action once a problem is defined is not truly preventative unless the root cause and the corrective action is documented for future review and action is taken through out the business when a similar or different action could cause a non-conformance. Maybe it is bleach that spills on a $500 dress that accidentally got put in the laundry basket rather the to the cleaner basket.

Making check sheets for all tasks where repeat errors occur in all areas of a business rather than just in one, because the supervisor thinks it will help. To me doing it in all departments is in my opinion is PREVENTATIVE. Doing it in just one department is CORRECTIVE.

Putting a fire extinguisher in an area where there has been a fire vs all areas where there is the potential for a fire is another example of CORRECTIVE vs PREVENTATIVE in my opinion when there is no current technology from a 100% guarantee that a fire will not start in all areas selected based upon knowledge and experience.

I had an interesting experience while dealing with INTEL. They have a policy of "copy exact". If a good practice or process is confirmed effective,the change is expected to be implement at all fabs across the world. Best practice and in cases sound preventive action across the business.

Do you agree or am I over the top?

Ed E

You are not "over the top." The ISO 9001 standard for Quality Management Systems is based in systems theory and process focus. To produce a Quality (Big Q) product, you must consider the entire environment. Using your story, while the punctured tire had no effect on the customer's use of the birdhouse product, addressing the issue steals resources ( time, money, managment and labor satisfaction, etc) from the production of birdhouses for the customer. In other words, this seemingly peripheral activity negatively impacts the "birdhouse process", so it is not peripheral after all.

It has been close to 100 years now that Industrial Engineers and Statisticians such as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, et al, demonstrated the economic effects of poor planning, poor execution, and the misguided notion that, as long as the product is "in spec", everything is OK. The viability of the organization depends on satisfying the customer in the most cost-efficient and profitable manner possible. This is not achieved by betting on the tails of the probability distribution ("I hope this gamble doesn't bankrupt the company" or "I hope this gamble pays off big!") but by understanding what it is you are doing and looking for ways to do that better. The idea is to achieve a predictable system, one that you and your customers can both depend on.