While ISO 9001:2015 assigns corrective and preventive action to clauses 8.7 and 6.1 respectively, the same process can handle both activities and support other ISO requirements such as the organizational knowledge data base. It can also be extended to exploit opportunities to remove waste or muda from the workplace.

It is vital to recognize that poor quality (the traditional focus of ISO 9001:2015) is the only one of the Toyota Production System's Seven Wastes that makes its presence known. The other six are often asymptomatic, or lacking in symptoms. This means that the workforce must act proactively to identify them, which supports Actions to Address Risks and Opportunities.

The Automotive Industry Action Group's Effective Problem Solving process (CQI-20) is a highly effective form of the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) continual improvement cycle. It can be used for corrective or preventive action. It includes definition of the problem, containment (in the case of corrective action), root cause analysis, testing and verification of actions to eliminate or prevent the problem, and standardization and best practice deployment of the solution. The completed project becomes part of the organizational knowledge (clause 7.1.6) and can be used as reference in the future.

CQI-20 stresses that there are actually three root causes for any problem. The traditional occurrence root cause is why the problem happened. The escape root cause is why it reached the next internal or external customer (if it did). The systemic root cause is why the planning system failed to address it in advance.

The hatto ("sudden recognition or awareness," e.g. of a safety or quality risk, or waste) or Error Cause Removal (ECR) allows employees (or other relevant interested parties) to initiate CAPA for potential safety or quality problems or, by implication, waste or muda. This may, for a sufficiently complex problem, require handoff to a formal CAPA process. If the problem can easily be solved at the shop floor level, though, this is what happens and the solution becomes part of the organizational knowledge resource. Examples will be provided to illustrate how this works.

Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) is arguably the most important process in the quality management system because so much else depends on it. Its numerous internal and external customer processes include not just poor quality but also customer complaints, internal audit findings, outputs of the management review meeting, and even opportunities for improvement as identified by internal and external stakeholders. 

Inadequate CAPA and root cause analysis is a predominant source of ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 findings as well as FDA Form 483 Observations. In addition, inadequate CAPA will result in unresolved audit findings and other unresolved deficiencies that will, in turn, lead to even more findings and, even worse, the consequences of the unresolved issues. Effective CAPA will on the other hand resolve the issues and also address their systemic root causes to prevent recurrence throughout the organization.

Formal CAPA is not required for issues that can be resolved by the process owner on the shop floor. The webinar will include a simple procedure for doing this.