Corrective and Preventive Actions are commonly known as CAPA within the Quality Assurance area. Corrective and preventive actions focus on a systematic investigation of the root cause of a non conformance, with the attempt to either prevent its recurrence (corrective action) or to prevent its occurrence (preventive action).
When a non conformance occurs within a process, it is necessary to perform an in depth investigation to identify what has actually caused the non conformance. This investigation is done to eliminate the root cause of the problem in order to prevent the same non conformance from occurring again. There are several analyzing tools and templates that can be used for investigating and identifying what the actual root cause of a problem is (e.g., the 5 Whys and the 8D problem solving work template). An action taken to prevent the re-occurrence of a non conformance is called a corrective action.
If it is foreseen that something in the business can cause a problem in the future, a preventive action can be taken to hinder the problem from occur. Sometimes a preventive action is called quality initiatives, and a related concept is improvement areas. These can be handled in the same way as the preventive action within IFS Applications.
For all concepts, it is essential to have visible and documented evidence of the person who is held responsible for the action that has to be taken, in order to eliminate the root cause as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of the action taken.