Hi friends! Today we will discuss about CAPA. The full form of CAPA is Corrective Action & Preventive Action. This word is very famous in Manufacturing/ Service industry. It is a common Tool used for improvement of project. CAPA is used to address customer complain or field failure.
Why is CAPA used?
- The objective of CAPA is to collect data of field failure/ customer complain, analyze the data, find out the root cause and then take corrective action on non-conformity and preventive action to prevent their recurrence.
Benefits of CAPA.
- Elimination of field failure, manufacturing defect.
- Help to comply QMS system in place.
- Increase customer satisfaction.
- Thorough investigation process to keep the existing system more robust.
If a customer (OEM, i.e., Original equipment Manufacturer) is asking to do CAPA, in that case, we have to do with the help of 8D or other TQM tools and submit the CAPA documents to customer. Whenever you do CAPA you have to update other documents as well like PFMEA, Control Plan, DFMEA etc.
Let us understand Corrective action & Preventive action with one example.
Suppose a boy is playing on the roof of a house and the roof has no boundary wall. Knowingly or unknowingly the boy fell on the ground and he broke his hand. After this incident boy’s father took his son to the hospital and got it bandaged for initial treatment. After a few days, the boy came back home. Boy’s father now built a boundary wall on the roof. Boy’s neighbor was watching the whole incident and they also built a boundary wall on their roof to avoid such type of incident.
Can u guess what is the Correction in this incident? hmmm?
Father took his son to hospital and got his wound bandaged which is the immediate action taken to correct the problem and this is called correction. Boy was in pain as his hand was broken so action taken by doctor and his team to treat his wound and take recovery action to heal it is called correction.
Now can you say what is corrective action in this case?
Father came back home and analyzed the situation that how his son fell down? After analysis he came to a conclusion to build a boundary wall on the roof so that his son won’t fall down again while playing on the rooftop. Thus the root cause in this case is roof had no boundary wall. So here the corrective action is to make a boundary wall on the roof.
Preventive action –
Boy’s neighbor who was carefully watching the whole incident made a boundary wall on the roof of his building as well to avoid any kind of mishap, so this action is called the preventive action.
If we talk about effectiveness in this case, once the boundary wall is made on the roof any incident of falling down won’t take place.