Key takeaways
Short answer: Corrective action fixes a problem that happened and eliminates its root cause so it does not recur. Preventive action acts on a potential problem, identified from trends, near-misses or risk analysis, before it ever occurs. Quality systems expect both, documented separately. Plants that only do corrective action are forever reacting; preventive action gets ahead of failures. See also root cause analysis vs 5 whys.
Corrective action is triggered by something that has already gone wrong. It contains the immediate issue, finds and removes the root cause, and verifies the fix, so the same nonconformance does not happen again. It is reactive, but essential and rigorous.
Preventive action is triggered by risk, not by failure. It acts on a trend, a near-miss or a risk assessment before a problem occurs, the harder, more proactive discipline, because nothing is yet on fire to force the work.
A defect ships and a customer complains. Corrective action contains the bad lot, traces the cause to a worn fixture, replaces it, and verifies the defect is gone. Preventive action looks wider: the same fixture type is on four other lines, and a maintenance trend shows them all wearing.
So those four are replaced before any of them produces a defect. Corrective fixed the failure that happened; preventive stopped the four that were about to.
A CAPA system showing only corrective actions signals a reactive culture. Evidence of preventive action, acting on a trend before it became a defect, demonstrates maturity and is exactly what auditors look for. The two must be distinct and separately documented.
Mine your data: recurring near-misses, drifting metrics, supplier trends. Each is a preventive-action trigger. Without a deliberate trigger, preventive action never happens, because there is no fire forcing it, which is why mature systems schedule the review of trends explicitly.
1. Only corrective action. The system is perpetually reactive.
2. No trigger for preventive action. Nothing forces it, so it never happens.
3. Corrective without verification. Closing the action without proving the fix worked.
4. Mislabelling. Calling a reactive fix "preventive" to satisfy an audit.
Preventive action on developing equipment and quality trends prevents the breakdowns and defects that erode OEE, the same logic as preventive maintenance, applied to quality. It moves losses out of the OEE numbers before they occur.
Fabrico surfaces the trends and recurring losses that should trigger preventive action, not just the failures that trigger corrective. Book a demo to see the data that drives proactive action.
No, it is two: corrective action and preventive action.
Preventive, nothing is on fire to force it, so it needs a deliberate trigger.
Trends, near-misses and risk analysis, signals before a failure occurs.
Preventive action shows a proactive, mature system rather than pure firefighting.
Schedule explicit review of trends and near-misses so the trigger is built in.
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