Taking timely corrective action

The standard requires the management personnel responsible for the area to take timely corrective action on the deficiencies found during the audit. 

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The results of the audit are documented and brought to the attention of the personnel with responsibility in the area audited. The management personnel responsible for that area take timely corrective action for the deficiencies found by the audit. 

The prompt and accurate discharge of those functions provides project management with the necessary information to take timely corrective action to... 

The crude unit corrosion control program was inadequate they did not take timely corrective actions to prevent plugging and excessive corrosion in the piping (CSFIIB 1999). 

The requirement to ensure that deviations reported by the QAU are communicated to the study director and that corrective actions are taken and documented does not mean that management itself must communicate the findings and take appropriate corrective action. An efficient QAU will document deviations and the fact that corrective action has already occurred in reports that are distributed to both management and the study director. The need for additional management follow-up will then be necessary only in those few instances in which corrective action was not adequately negotiated between the QAU and the scientific staff before the issuance of the QAU report. When corrective action is underway but not complete at the time of the QAU report, the report need only indicate that fact with additional follow-up provided in subsequent reports. 

The key to implementation is a continuous flow of relevant and speedy toxicity information. Timely information cannot be provided by many toxicity tests, especially those which require some days to obtain results. For effective system control, toxicity information is required in minutes and the use of reliable technology is now available to provide this monitoring information, especially if on-line techniques are used. The Microtox test is now available in an on-line mode [32] which allows for an analysis to be conducted automatically ew cy 30 mins. This test system can (qjerate unattended for 7 d. This ensures that the operator will know what is happening, rather than what has happened, and thus be able to take effective corrective action when toxicity monitoring indicates a biological event outside of acceptable limits. 

A continuous analyser is attached to a sampling line and thereafter continuously and automatically obtains a signal proportional to the instantaneous concentration of a selected component in the flowing stream. The information acquired is automatically used to set the process environment controllers and to take any corrective action needed to control the process. These actions might be to close a valve, cool the stream, allow more diluent to be added, speed up mixing etc. Thus continuous analysers carry out the function of the control laboratory but in real-time and more efficiently. Continuous analysers are employed in many situations such as routine analysis, monitoring and on-line process control. 

The residence time of rotary kilns is generally in the range 3 to 6 hours and response times are within the normal operator s working shift. Instrumentation should, therefore, assist the operator to detect changes at an early stage and to take appropriate corrective action. 

Human performance is usually critical to system safety, yet, as discussed many times throughout this series of books, human behavior is essentially impossible to quantify. There is no way that a quantification analysis can incorporate the fact that an operator is distracted due to a fight he had with his wife just before coming to work, so does not take the correct actions during the course of a plant upset. 

The essential requirement of the shift team, under the Shift Manager, operating a complex nuclear plant is their reliability when performing their tasks. That they should be able to supervise and operate the plant in the specified normal condition, and be able to identify operational abnormalities and incidents quickly, is all-important. They must at the same time be able to take the correct action swiftly to solve any plant problems that arise. 

The Zone 1 exhaust fan inlet volume control damper is manually set to maintain the total SCB exhaust flow rate in order to achieve the necessary residence time for exhaust gas in the charcoal filters. This ensures that radioactive iodine is removed from the Zone 1 exhaust gas before the exhaust gas is released to the environment. An alarm is provided to alert the operations staff if the flow rate exceeds the established setpoint. Should this occur, HCF operations personnel will investigate the reason(s) for the abnormal condition and take appropriate corrective action, which may include re-adjustment of the volume control damper. Since such an occurrence is not an initiator for a radioactive material release event, operator action is an appropriate response. In addition, certain activities in the SCBs may be curtailed until the condition is corrected. 

Procedures are the lowest and least preferred hazard control in Table 3-2. The reason is they depend totally on human behavior to recognize the hazard as it occurs and take appropriate corrective action. The hazard may be present at all times. It may appear all of a sudden. A person must recognize the hazard, know there is a need for a procedure. 

The tightest possible control would be to take this corrective action in the shortest possible time, i.e. the scan interval (ts). By combining Equations (4.9) to (4.11) we can derive the largest possible controller gain (Aimax)-... 

Alarm prioritization is another important issue. It is important for the operator to be able to distinguish the most important alarms to attend to. Human operators are limited by both their cognitive processing abilities and their physical response times to the number of alarms they can respond to in any given unit of time. Two main factors affect the prioritization of alarms (1) the severity of the consequences that the operator could avoid by taking the corrective action, and (2) the time available compared with the time needed. 

Same with the other problem. CO is increasing at 2 ppm a year. Another 3 or 4°F will make large parts of the earth uninhabitable. Exploitation of heavy hydrocarbon deposits in Alberta and Venezuela can only increase the 2 ppm CO growth rate. This can go on for another 20 years or another 100 years. Then Mother Nature will take serious corrective action to restore natural equilibrium. It s only a matter of time. 

The function of derivative control action is to anticipate the future behavior of the error signal by considering its rate of change. In the past, derivative action was also referred to as rate action, pre-act, or anticipatory control For example, suppose that a reactor temperature increases by 10 °C in a short period of time, say, 3 min. This clearly is a more rapid increase in temperature than a 10 °C rise in 30 min, and it could indicate a potential runaway situation for an exothermic reaction. If the reactor were under manual control, an experienced plant operator would anticipate the consequences and quickly take appropriate corrective action to reduce the temperature. Such a response would not be obtainable from the proportional and integral control modes discussed so far. Note that a proportional controller reacts to a deviation in temperature only, making no distinction as to the time period over which the deviation develops. Integral control action is also ineffective for a sudden deviation in temperature, because the corrective action depends on the duration of the deviation. 

Many times, the broken part of a pump is replaced when it tails without an effort to understand why the situation happened. Any corrective action that takes place is usually a temporary arrangement. The probability is quite high that the pump will fail again for the same reason. This part replaeement with no analysis practice is not accepstable due to the high cost of the maintenanee, parts, time and lost produetion. 

This data may be needed to trace the source of any problems with product which was produced using this equipment. To take corrective action you will also need to know the configuration of the process plant at the time of processing the product. If only one piece of equipment is involved, the above records will give you this information but if the process plant consists of many items of equipment which are periodically changed during maintenance, you will need to know which equipment was in use when the fault is likely to have been generated. 

Element 4.13 of ISO 9001 deals with specific nonconformities and element 4.14 deals with the action to eliminate their cause and prevent their recurrence. This additional ISO/TS 16949 requirement does seem to duplicate what is covered in clause 4.14.2. However, it does add a significant aspect - a reduction plan. One could be complying with elements 4.13 and 4.14 of ISO 9001 but have no reduction plan, since element 4.14 does not impose any time constraints on corrective action or require the incidence of nonconformity to be reduced. It is quite possible to take corrective action continuously and still not reduce the number of nonconformities. The requirement may be in the wrong place (i.e. in 4.13 rather than 4.14) but it is a useful addition nonetheless. 

This contains two separate requirements one for verifying that the prescribed action has been taken and the other for verifying that the action has been effective in eliminating the original nonconformity. The Corrective Action report should define the corrective action to be taken, the actionee, and the date by which it is to be completed. The action-ee should report when the action has been completed in order that it may be verified. The effectiveness of some actions can be verified at the same time but quite often the effectiveness can only be checked after a considerable lapse of time. Remember it took an analysis to detect the nonconformity therefore it may take further analysis to detect that the nonconformity has been eliminated. In such cases the report should indicate when the checks for effectiveness are to be carried out and provision made for indicating that the corrective action has or has not been effective. 

To guarantee shipment on time, you either need to maintain an adequate inventory of finished goods for shipment on demand or utilize only predictable processes and obtain sufficient advanced order information from your customer. When you examine some of the requirements in ISO/TS 16949, you may be tempted to question how you can continually improve performance, reduce costs, and minimize space, material travel, equipment downtime, process variation, etc. and meet 100% on-time shipments. You can t, unless you have a partnership with your customer in which there is mutual assistance to meet common objectives. Without sufficient lead time on orders you will be unlikely to meet the target. However, the standard does acknowledge that you may not always be successful. There will be matters outside your control and matters over which you need complete control. It is the latter that you can do something about and take corrective action should the target not be achieved. 

As a project progresses and you monitor performance, there will be times when actual does not measure up to plan. This calls for corrective action. However, don t be too quick to take action. Some deficiencies turn out to be self-correcting. It is unrealistic to expect steady and consistent progress day after day. Sometimes you ll fall behind and sometimes you ll be ahead, but in a well-planned project, you will probably finish on schedule and within budget. 

In larger facilities much of this monitoring work is carried out in real time, with the data transmitted to a remote control station. Increasingly, the corrective actions necessary may take place automatically through a computer modem. 

It is only when an overfeed of sodium salt chelant takes place over a period of time, coupled with the presence of oxygen and the disruption of the magnetite film, that a serious chelant corrosion risk exists. Under these conditions, however, other equally serious boiler failure risks also exist that demand appropriate and swift corrective action. 

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