BrydgeOne
Book a demo
  1. Home
  2. Begrippenlijst
  3. Corrective action
QualityTerm

Corrective action

A corrective action removes the cause of a non-conformity or incident that has already happened, so it does not occur again. That is more than repairing the immediate damage.

Explanation

With a problem you usually do two things. First you restore the situation: fix the error, plug the leak, block the batch (the correction). Then you tackle the cause so it does not come back: the corrective action. Doing only the first means you have the same problem again next month.

A good corrective action follows from a root cause analysis and targets that cause, not the symptom. It has an owner, a deadline and a check afterwards. Common examples: changing a work instruction, guarding a machine, providing training, adding a process step.

The difference with a preventive action: corrective follows something that happened, preventive prevents something that has not happened yet. Also do not set a corrective action for everything: for a small, one-off problem the correction may be enough. Decide that consciously and record it.

Example from practice

An employee was injured because a guard was missing. The correction: put the guard back. The corrective action: a check on guards in the daily start-up round and a toolbox talk about not removing them.

© 2026 BrydgeOne. General information, not legal or other professional advice. No rights can be derived from this explanation.

In BrydgeOne

Where you work with Corrective action

ActionsFollow up corrective and preventive actions. Quality reportsLog nonconformities and complaints in a structured way. Incidents & reportsLog incidents and turn them into follow-up. AuditsPlan internal audits and log findings. ISO 9001Quality
Knowledge base

Keep reading

CAPA: how to follow up corrective and preventive actions effectivelyCAPA stands for Corrective and Preventive Action. It is how you solve a problem for good and stop it from coming back. This article walks through the route from report to root cause, action and effectiveness check. Incident investigation: finding the root cause with the 5 whys methodIncident investigation starts with a simple question: why did this happen? If you keep asking it, you often end up at a cause in how the work is organized rather than at the person who happened to be there. Below you can read how that works in practice.
Glossary

See also

CAPACorrective and Preventive ActionPreventive actionPreventive actionRoot cause analysisRoot cause analysisEffectiveness checkEffectiveness checkNon-conformityNon-conformity

See how BrydgeOne supports this

You only pay for the modules you switch on, from € 49 per month. In a demo we show how it works with your own processes.

Book a demo See pricing