Non-conformance can significantly impact businesses, from disrupting production schedules and costing time and money to risking the safety and damaging the company’s reputation. In order to prevent these issues from happening, it’s important to put some preventive Non-Conformance Management Tips into place. Here are four of the best.
Adhere to the Standard Operating Procedure
It is important to have a standard operating procedure in place and to make sure that everyone in the organization adheres to it. This will help to ensure that all potential sources of non-conformance are identified and addressed.
Proper Training
One of the best ways to prevent non-conformances is to ensure that all employees receive proper training. This training should cover all aspects of your quality management system, as well as any specific procedures that are relevant to their job. By ensuring that everyone is appropriately trained, you can help to eliminate many potential sources of error.
Have Good Inspection Criteria
The first step in preventing non-conformances is to have good inspection criteria. This means having a well-defined set of standards that products must meet before they are considered acceptable. Good inspection criteria should be based on the requirements of the customer or end user and should be realistic and achievable.
Conduct Internal Audits
One of the most effective ways to prevent non-conformance is to conduct regular audits of your business processes. These audits can be performed by an external auditor or by a team of employees. Either way, these audits will help you to identify areas where your processes are not compliant with regulations. An audit checklist can help to ensure that all areas of your business are covered. Internal Audits need to be conducted at least once a quarter. Although it’s impossible to prevent non-conformance from happening in every instance, there are steps that can be taken to help minimize the chances of it occurring. The four tips we’ve outlined should give you an excellent place to start. The tips we’ve shared should help you get started on setting up your own system. Have you tried any of these methods? What has worked well for you? We would love to hear from you about your experiences with non-conformance prevention.