Corrective and Preventive action

As per the various guidance documents, the following terminologies are defined as –
Correction-Action to eliminate a detected nonconformity.

Corrective action-Action to eliminate the cause of a detected nonconformity or other undesirable situation to prevent recurrence.

Preventive action-Action to eliminate the cause of a potential nonconformity or other undesirable potential situation to prevent occurrence.

As Correction and Corrective actions both are post event actions, but Preventive action may or may not be post event action.

As it commonly said to derive the Corrective and Preventive action plan during investigations for Deviations, Non-conformances, OOS or Complaints. However, in most of the cases we take/propose a correction and corrective action. The preventive actions can not be decided as we are only investigating the existing non-conformity.
As investigation does not always include the risk assessment of entire process by which one can decide on potential non-conformity to take any preventive action.

Hence, the question is why it is always called as Corrective and Preventive actions ., I would rather prefer terminology as “Correction and Corrective actions” for any existing non-conformity and “Risk assessment and Preventive actions” for any potential non-conformity.
I seek forum’s comment on this.

Ganesh Nomulwar

It’s called CAPA and not CCAPA because the corrective action is what you did immediately and preventative action is what you do to prevent it from occurring again. keep it simple…why complicate issues that are not needed.

Dear Meyert,
It is not about the complicating the things, Its about understabding the concept. Once we understand the conept we can always make it simple. Whatever you have metioned is the general undetrstaning of this subject. Hence, I have posted in forum for healthy discussion.

Regards
Ganesh Nomulwar

Let’s have the discussion.
I start with is CCARAPA a requirment or is CAPA? Just kidding…:slight_smile:

I agree that CA is a post event action but disagree that PA is not also a post event action in that an action had to occur in order that some prevention was necessary. Uncoupling CAPA, as I have seen done, seems to be counterproductive to the intent of CAPA. Granted some PA do not effectively prevent the occurrence nor do they sometimes not find the root cause, however, they do put into place policy and strategies that attempt to mitigate issues and can in the future be updated. A lot of wasted effort goes into trying to put in the most bullet proof PA and thus never get implemented. Whereas, a simple PA that can be implemented and updated as needed has the greater potential to prevent the recurrence of the issue.