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A good nonconformity report has all the information that is needed, and is easy to understand by others in the organization. This sounds trivial and easy to do, however in practice it can be a lot harder to put together. The report is actually a way to communicate what went wrong somewhere in the company with everybody in the organization. Clear sentences and proper detailed descriptions are crucial. A lot of confusion can be prevented by having an easy to use NC form, so it is vital that it is done correctly.

Keep It Simple

More often than not we see quite complex nonconformity reports. The form has a ton of questions which people in the field don’t feel like filling in. Their jobs are to build and produce, not to fill in forms. So it is important to keep the form simple. Make sure that the people in the field only have to fill in just a couple of questions which holds the bare minimum of information for the manager to create the report.

Reduce Freedom

In order to analyze properly, make sure you use pre-defined fields in your nonconformity form. This way you will have consistent information to analyze. Also ensure that the person filling in the nonconformity doesn’t have the option to come up with a whole story that is hard to understand. These predefined selections make life a lot easier both for the quality department and the person that fills in the form.

Photos

Always add pictures to the nonconformity report. Pictures say more than thousands words and are much easier to interpret by someone else. He or she simply looks at the image and sees what went wrong. All mobile phones these days allow you to take a photo or two of the situation and add it to the report. With the latest quality platforms you now have mobile apps that integrate directly with your quality management system for even faster reports. Check out how Qooling allows you to do this.

Root Cause

Support some kind of root cause analysis for the nonconformities. There are more than enough options to use. Just make sure you pick one and follow through. Some options are:

The root-cause analysis really allows the company to find out why things went wrong. Finding the root cause is important for setting up the right actions to prevent this from happening in the future. Coming up with a solution to just one cause will not lead to the desired results and still leaves room for the same kind of mistakes.

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