A non conformance report captures work that did not meet requirement — what it was, what was decided, who authorised it. Raised late or written vaguely, it becomes paperwork nobody can act on.
A non conformance report — an NCR, sometimes called a non conformity report — records something that did not meet a requirement: a part outside tolerance, a service delivered against the wrong specification, a step performed out of sequence. Its job is to capture what was found, quarantine whatever is affected, and record the decision about what to do with it, with a name against that decision.
It is the input to everything downstream. A weak NCR — raised days later, described as quality issue with product, disposition unrecorded — makes the investigation guesswork and the trend analysis meaningless, because eleven vague reports cannot be compared with each other.
Use as is deserves particular discipline. It is a legitimate decision, and it is the one most often taken informally by whoever is under deadline pressure. It should require named authority, a recorded justification, and customer agreement where the requirement was theirs — otherwise it becomes the default and the specification quietly stops meaning anything.
The most common failure is not a badly written report; it is a report that never gets raised. People hesitate because raising one feels like reporting a colleague, because it takes fifteen minutes they do not have, or because they expect an argument. So problems get fixed quietly, and the organisation loses both the data and the chance to find the cause.
Two things change this. Make raising one take two minutes rather than fifteen, and separate the report from blame entirely — the NCR records that work did not meet requirement, not who is at fault. Where a team is rewarded for a low count of NCRs, expect the count to fall and the underlying problems to stay exactly where they were.
Individual NCRs solve individual problems. Read together, they tell you which process step, which supplier, which product line or which shift generates the most, and that is where improvement effort actually pays. This only works if the reports are categorised consistently, which is an argument for a short fixed list of categories rather than a free-text field everybody fills in differently.
It is also worth tracking how long they stay open. A pile of NCRs awaiting disposition is material sitting in quarantine, cash tied up in it, and a growing temptation to release something without deciding properly.
Ettex Forms works as the raising route: one form, reachable from a link or a QR code near where the work happens, capturing the minimum fields with photographs attached, so a report takes a minute rather than a trip to a desk. Submissions land in one place instead of arriving as messages to whoever was nearby.
It handles the intake and nothing after it. There is no disposition workflow, no approval routing, no material status or quarantine tracking, no link between a report and a corrective action, and no trend reporting — the review, the decision and the analysis happen elsewhere, with the register in Ettex Records or in a sheet. In a regulated environment where the process must be validated and signed electronically, that is a case for dedicated quality software rather than a form and a table.
A record of work that did not meet a requirement, capturing what was found, what is affected, the disposition decided and who authorised it.
Typically use as is, rework, repair, regrade, return to supplier, or scrap. Use as is should require named authority and, where relevant, customer agreement.
No. Some warrant only a correction. The decision should be recorded either way rather than left implicit.
Because raising one feels like reporting a colleague and takes too long. Make it quick and keep it separate from blame.
Not on a low count — that suppresses reporting rather than problems. Time to closure and recurrence are better measures.
The aggregate. Consistent categories make patterns by process step, supplier or product line visible, which is where improvement pays.
Make raising one take two minutes, segregate first and decide second, require a name against use as is — and read them in aggregate every month.
A whistleblowing policy tells people how to report serious wrongdoing and promises they will not suffer for it. Whether the promise is believed is decided by what happened to the last person who used it.
A subject access request asks you to hand over the personal data you hold about someone. The deadline is short, the search is wider than people expect, and preparation is what makes it routine.
360 degree feedback collects views from the people around someone rather than only their manager. It produces genuinely new information — and turns into something else entirely the moment it affects a salary.