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Is a CAR necessary for every Customer complaint?

Discussion in 'ISO 9001:2008 - Quality Management Systems' started by Bruce Salonek, Jun 17, 2016.

  1. Bruce Salonek

    Bruce Salonek New Member

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    During our certification process, our registrar indicated that all customer complaints should be entered into our QMS system as Corrective Action Requests. Is this a common way to address customer complaints? We have received some customer complaints that are extremely vague in tier nature and do not have any specific examples. I am speaking of complaints about personnel qualifications and/or training.
     
  2. tony s

    tony s Well-Known Member

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    ISO 9001:2008 specifies in clause 8.5.2:
    The organization shall take action to eliminate the causes of nonconformities in order to prevent recurrence.
    Corrective actions shall be appropriate to the effects of the nonconformities encountered.
    A documented procedure shall be established to define requirements for
    a) reviewing nonconformities (including customer complaints),
    b) determining the causes of nonconformities,
    c) evaluating the need for action to ensure that nonconformities do not recur...

    ISO 9001:2015 specifies in clause 10.2.1:
    When a nonconformity occurs, including any arising from complaints, the organization shall:
    a) react to the nonconformity and, as applicable:
    1) take action to control and correct it;
    2) deal with the consequences;
    b) evaluate the need for action to eliminate the cause(s) of the nonconformity, in order that it does not
    recur or occur elsewhere
    ...

    Corrective Action is defined as action to eliminate the cause of nonconformity to prevent recurrence.

    Therefore, before a complaint is entered into a CAR, an organization must evaluate first the need for corrective action. Actions such as correction can be enough to deal with complaints.
     
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  3. Qualmx

    Qualmx Well-Known Member

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    And sometimes the complaint does not apply.
     
  4. Bev D

    Bev D Moderator Staff Member

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    We do not raise a Corrective Action for every complaint. We take actions to correct the complaint when appropriate. We record and track Custoemr complaints. We only begin corrective action when the number or severity of the complaint warrants corrective action. As tony s clearly points out your auditor has NO basis to require a CA for every complaint...
     
  5. Qualmx

    Qualmx Well-Known Member

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    Correct, because it depends of the severity, the management of the CA require time and efforts and sometimes the nc o complaint is a minor problem,and is not advisible to to fill it up your system with CAs.
     
  6. RoxaneB

    RoxaneB Moderator Staff Member

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    I come from an industry where we did log every customer complaint into our nonconformance system. However, we also had 'triggers' that would determine if a correction was the course of action to be taken or a full-blow corrective action. We did this to ensure we were capturing - to the extent possible - possible quality issues (be it with our product or our service) that could be traced back to our product-related processes. By identifying and capturing as many as possible, this also allowed us to have more information to review when it came time to review the suitability of our triggers. If, for example, we found an increasing number of complaints with a particular product, we could decide that any complaint related to that that particular product would result in a CAR. Or, if we found a decreasing number of complaints related to an existing trigger, we could decide to remove that trigger from the CAR list.
     
  7. David Graham

    David Graham Member

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    We have corrective actions in my work place and customer complaints. Some complaints become CAs but the majority become Technical Investigation reports.
     
  8. Eric Twiname

    Eric Twiname Well-Known Member

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    Thanks tony s for the real text.

    CA comes from nonconformity.
    Even the way the standard is written (kudos to them), it does NOT equate customer complaint and nonconformity.
    The complaint MAY be an NC....or may not....it is up to your company to determine if an NC exists.
    Each complaint should lead to a determination...but if the determination is that no NC exists, why bother with the CA?

    Extreme example: If the customer ordered blue, got blue, and complained that they meant to order yellow and "you should have known that"....why waste your time with a CA?
    There was a customer complaint, but no NC. CA for this case would be a waste of resources, and is not required.
     
    James likes this.