The Coordinator of the Master in Quality Management and Excellence in Organizations at Bureau Veritas University Center, Lorena Bermúdez, explains in this post the terms "correction" and "corrective action."
In the field of Management Systems, terms such as “Correction” and “Corrective Action” are often confused . I have been asked about this on many occasions, as they actually refer to very similar issues. In this post, we will try to shed some light on this issue.
First, let's see what ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems. Fundamentals and vocabulary tells us about this:
Correction: "Action to eliminate a detected nonconformity . "
Corrective Action : "Action to eliminate the cause of a bc data nonconformity and prevent it from recurring . "
Thus, correction would be the immediate action taken to eliminate the detected nonconformity, while Corrective Action would be the action focused on analyzing the root cause in order to take actions to prevent the nonconformity from occurring again.
It may happen that even if the non-conformity has been corrected, it may reoccur at another time, since the root problem has not been eliminated. It is necessary to take measures. To do this, the causes that could have generated the non-conformity must be analyzed, and based on this information, the Corrective Actions to be carried out for its complete elimination will be decided.
Therefore, we could say that the main difference lies in the fact that correcting means eliminating a non-conformity at a given time, but not at its root (something like a "patch to get out of a jam"), while Corrective Action does eliminate it at its root.
To give a simple example , let's imagine that a batch of a certain product must be delivered to a customer on a weekly basis, but due to an error when transcribing it to the shipping order, a batch of another product is delivered. Correcting this would mean, for example, replacing this batch with the correct batch, so that the customer receives the correct one. This would be a solution for the moment. But obviously the following week the same error would be made again, since the incorrect batch is written on the shipping order. Corrective Action would go further, eliminating the non-conformity at its root, for example by modifying the shipping order.
In summary , when a non-conformity is detected, we must proceed to identify it appropriately in order to prevent said non-conformity from spreading further downstream and eventually reaching the customer.
Once identified, we must proceed to act on the non-conformity itself , in order to:
Eliminate nonconformity: Correcting .
Prevent it from happening again and similar nonconformities from continuing to occur: Carrying out Corrective Action .
If you would like more information, please consult our training programmes in the areas of Systems Integration and Quality .