Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA) is an important part of the quality management approach of many organizations. It focuses on the systematic investigation of the root causes of identified problems or identified risks. A corrective action deals with an issue that has occurred, and a preventative action addresses the potential for problems in the future. Corrective actions are applied in response to things like customer complaints and unacceptable or inconsistent product quality.

CAPA software helps organizations support this form of improvement in four important ways.

Identify

When companies standardize their approach to CAPA by implementing software designed to support it, staff can easily and quickly capture any quality problems identified on the front line. The relevant leaders are automatically informed about these issues. Leaders can decide to investigate the issue themselves or delegate the responsibility to someone else. The CAPA solution becomes the repository of all information about the issue, making it easy for the person who reported the problem, and everyone else who is impacted, to keep tabs on the progress of corrective action.

Correct

A CAPA software solution gives teams a platform for working together to solve any type of quality problem. Alerts and notifications make sure that everyone stays engaged and helps leaders recognize when progress stalls. Tasks are assigned to the right staff members and their work is documented for future review and potential replication.

Prevent Recurrence

Corrective action should not only solve the problem for the moment, but prevent it from happening again. CAPA software helps make this happen by providing a method of broadcasting the resolution of each problem throughout the organization. This makes it easy for the best practices discovered in the process of correcting each problem to be adopted by other teams and departments. If similar problems do come up, staff can access the CAPA software to see how the problem has been solved before, saving them the work of reinventing the wheel. Finding the root cause of each issue is central to the goal of prevention. The CAPA solution is ideal for documenting the 5 Whys or other root cause detection techniques.

Eliminate Risk

Preventative action involves more than stopping the recurrence of problems that have already happened, it also involves identifying issues that could be problems in the future and improving them before something goes wrong. By providing a systematic way of notifying people when problems are identified and solved, CAPA software makes everyone aware of what could go wrong. Bringing issues to light causes team members to examine their own processes for the risk of similar problems.

In addition to these four central functions, CAPA software also signals to the organization that leadership is committed to a consistent, repeatable, and effective approach to problem-solving. It creates a common language around this form of improvement and encourages participation at all levels. It makes sense for any organization dedicated to the CAPA approach to implement technology that supports it.