Preventive action

Of course prevention is better than cure, but isn't it difficult enough determining the root cause(s) of and eradicating problems that have already occurred, never mind trying to pre-empt those that have not.

The recent London bombings lead me to consider the issue of ‘preventive action' - why? Because now after the event the government are proposing a range of new anti-terrorism legislation in order to ‘prevent' (hopefully) a reoccurrence. A very difficult task.

http://news.bbc.co.u...ics/4692515.stm

But do we really have to make a mistake once (at the very least) before we do enough to stop it from happening?

In this case the answer is probably yes as some of the proposed new anti-terrorism laws will undoubtedly impinge on a number of citizens civil liberties and obviously it would have been much more difficult (or impossible) to get cross-party and public support for the legislation pre 07/07.

Organisations are just micro cultures of wider society; if we propose to implement a change within our organisation, for example ‘a procedure change' to prevent a potential problem (that has never previously occurred) - wouldn't there be some resistance? People just tend not to like change. Unless they can understand the need for change and clearly see the benefits of change, resistance to change is much more likely to be encountered. I believe Risk Assessment is a tool for helping to forge the link between need and benefit, which can bring meaning to the individual and help to reduce their natural resistance to change.

Isn't it better to consider carefully the risks today and develop sensible, measured contingency plans, rather than wait until the heat of battle?

We all carry out personal risk assessments when considering moving house, changing jobs, having children, an affair of the heart or even another pint of beer - perhaps we wouldn't draw it up into a chart, we may be unaware we are doing it, but we carry out risk assessments of some sort every day.

Despite my waffling hopefully you can see the importance of risk assessment as an essential tool in the problem solving process for any number of situations.

Implementing a corrective action that prevents a problem from reoccurring is good; implementing a preventive action for a wisely predicted problem is great!

Regards,
Simon

Implementing a corrective action that prevents a problem from reoccurring is good; implementing a preventive action for a wisely predicted problem is great!

What about simply taking care of what we are doing ?
Why do we use complicated words to express simple ideas ?

What about simply taking care of what we are doing ? 
Why do we use complicated words to express simple ideas ?

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I cannot comment for anyone else Franco, but I've always been full of BS - and now I have an outlet. Seriously you're right taking care of what we are doing is something we take for granted, yet often it does not happen in practice.

With regard to using complicated language to explain simple things - it's inherent in standards and business lingo; perhaps we think we have to. It is a salutary (I mean useful) lesson; in future my goal is to get my point across using simple language, whilst at the same time trying to appear intelligent - its not going to be easy.

Thanks,
Simon

in future my goal is to get my point across using simple language, whilst at the same time trying to appear intelligent - its not going to be easy.

I agree. It's a challenging task mate

I agree. It's a challenging task mate

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Seriously though it's important when you consider the number of non-English members of the SDF - I'm amazed how you all manage.

Simon

just to give everyone a scare,

If you have an ISO9001:2000 system third party registered there is a paradox;

if you identify an internal nonconformance or worse still get a customer complaint by definition you have failed to comply with your Preventative action system because you did not effectively address a potential nonconformance. Therefore when the third party auditor visits he should raise a nonconformance against you because your prevenative action system failed.

It's a good job that some auditors are actually human otherwise we'd be in a real pickle

just to give everyone a scare,

If you have an ISO9001:2000 system third party registered there is a paradox;

if you identify an internal nonconformance or worse still get a customer complaint by definition you have failed to comply with your Preventative action system because you did not effectively address a potential nonconformance.  Therefore when the third party auditor visits he should raise a nonconformance against you because your prevenative action system failed. 

It's a good job that some auditors are actually human otherwise we'd be in a real pickle

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Impossibly logical; so what does a 'human' auditor look for as evidence of an effective preventive action system?

Regards,
Simon

You're looking for two things for the potential nonconformities:

1 - Effective contract review has been carried out, getting a customer complaint because you haven't actually supplied what the customer ordered happens far too often.

2 - That there is actually some effort to carry out preventative action in line with the spirit of the standard.

A very elegant method is to use the audits, many people raise "observations" during internal audits surely another way to term these are "opportunities for preventive action". logging these on a spredsheet and reviewing/actioning them is about as good as most auditors will expect, the added bonus is that you have to do the audits anyway and review the audit findings so the only extra work is to log these observations and follow them up at the next audit.

Simple, minimal extra paperwork, hopefully beneficial to the business.

Obviously the prevention of reocurance means as an auditor you don't want to see the same things happening again and again, how to solve depends on the problem

Would it be going too far to say any improvement a business makes could be classed as a preventive measure? Examples: employing a sales rep to prevent losing business in a particular export market or implementing a 5S Programme.

If so logging these could also be evidence of an effective preventive action system.

See this thread: http://www.saferpak....?showtopic=1074

Thanks for your input James it's good to get the views of a cert body auditor.

Regards,
Simon