Introduction
Then non confirmance management is basically defined the all management and operational failure as per the predefined SOP & code of conduct. Despite of strong management and their procedure, failure and deviation may still occurred. These non compliance consider as non confirmance.
This is systematic and effective approach to identify deviation and implement necessary corrective action to rectify findings and work on the root cause to prevent similar occurrence. By proactive approach organisation can enhance their standard and better improvement consistently to reduce the operational and business risk.
Understanding of NCR (Non Conformance Report)
It is a non compliance occurs when product or services and defined procedure did not meet the expected outcomes. The requirement basically defined by the local authorities, client, customer, and best industries practices, industry standard, stakeholder input as per the business and operational needs.
Generally non conformance can occur within the organisation at any stage such as procurement, production, service delivery, failure of adherence inspection and customer feedback or grievance.
Common types of Non conformance as follows:
- Failure to follow approved standard procedure
- Product & service delivery failure or not meet the expected requirement
- Documentation and record keeping failure.
- Fail to meet or stablish the regulatory requirement
- Poor grievance management and customer dissatisfaction
Non Conformance Management Process
The effective health, safety and environment management system completely relies on the continues identify address potential deviation according to stablished standards. Again non compliance is failure to comply with the legal requirement breaching them can have non conformance. The management of non conformance provide systematic and structured pathway to recognise issues, investigate root causes to implement essential corrective and preventive action.
1.1 Identification and Documentation
This is the very first step where issues are identifies and recorded to control effectively. These are the following information to be consider such as complete description of the issues along with the picture or evidence if required, date, time, exact location, and final department or responsible person (Individual details)
1.2 Immediate Action Taken
The management should take immediate action to control the issues and further adverse consequences. These actions usually resolves the issues temporarily rather than prevention for long term, these immediate action could be following.
- Segregate or separate the reactive chemicals
- Stopping unsafe behaviour or practices
- Barricading and isolating hazardous area
- Notify top management and involved person
1.3 Risk Evaluation and Root Cause Investigation
All reported or identified issues must be thoroughly investigated to understand the major cause behind the non conformance. The primary objective of the investigation is to identify the root cause rather than blaming of any person, basically part of continuous learning and improvement.
5. Investigation Approach
At this stage comprehensive information usually gather from the incident scene. These information consist of following bit not limited to this, such as collect the exact date & time of the incident, number of person involved, a written statement from the eye witness, examine the environmental and operational conditions their authorization of work.
6. Methodology of Root Cause Analysis
- Why why analysis
- Fishbone analysis
- Fault tree analysis
- Swiss cheese analysis
These methodology shall utilise for deep investigation of root cause and make sure during the investigation main focus on the organization system failure, not directly as individual. Additionally focus on the identifying underlying cause and direct cause.
7. Corrective and Preventive Action
The corrective action play a critical role for immediate eliminating root cause. These could be following example of corrective action
- Revision of stablished procedure according to the recent identified issues
- Either repairing or removing the faulty or damage tools equipment
- Providing additional job specific training.
8. Implementation and Monitoring
The implementation and monitoring of any corrective and preventive action are the key element of the organisational continuous improvement of effective hse management system. When ever critical issues are identified during the inspection, walkthrough, audit, and safety observation such as any work place incident, non compliance of defined standard, unsafe condition, unsafe action anf nearmisses etc. the organisation must take immediate action to control further adverse condition. However any critical issues must be thoroughly investigated to identify the root cause behind the identified issue.
9. Verification of Effectiveness
This is the most important element of managing non conformance and corrective action implementation process because organization should evaluate the effectiveness to prevent recurrence. The evaluation process consist of collecting evidences such feedback, inspection record, audit result, test report and compliance result, etc that will help organisation to measure their corrective measure functioning. Basically this requirement support organisation for continues improvement and develop robust health safety and environment management system.
The mostly reputed companies are having well established criteria for evaluation of their non conformities to continuous reduction workplace health and safety injuries, effectively elimination unsafe condition and behaviors and improve overall compliance. At the end its crucial to maintain documented record as evidence or future reference, if any corrective action found ineffective or not properly implemented, at this stage top management should initiate the investigation to identify the actual root cause and underlying cause for further corrective action.
10. Non Conformance Closure and Continual Improvement
The closure and continuous improvement are the most important aspect of all HSE management system. The closure indicate that all identified issues were evaluated and investigated along with necessary corrective action against the root causes. At the closure stage the entire report are reviewed by the top management including the relevant evidence to ensure all action are taken to resolve the issue and prevent similar incident or recurrence.
Additionally top management focuses of continuous improvement based incident occurred to enhance existing management system and improve overall effectiveness of process safety. Through establishment of lesson learn programm, failure and causes are communicated to the all employees to prevent future incident.
