Non conformance report: recording what went wrong while it is still useful

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.

What a non conformance report must capture

• What was found, described observably: the measurement, the deviation, the specific requirement missed.
• The requirement it failed against — a drawing, a specification, a customer instruction, a procedure.
• What is affected and how much: this unit, this batch, everything since a date. The extent question is frequently answered too narrowly.
• Where it is now, and confirmation that affected material is segregated so it cannot be used by accident.
• Who found it, and when — both the discovery date and, where known, when it occurred.
• The disposition: use as is, rework, repair, regrade, return to supplier, scrap.
• Who authorised that disposition, and whether the customer had to agree.
• Whether it warrants a corrective action, or is a one-off with a correction and no more.

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.

Raising them early is worth more than raising them well

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.

Running the process

1. Give people one obvious route to raise one, reachable from wherever the work happens.
2. Require the minimum fields at raising and allow the rest to be completed during review — a partial report today beats a complete one next week.
3. Segregate affected material immediately, before the disposition discussion.
4. Determine the extent honestly: what else could be affected, and how far back.
5. Decide the disposition with named authority, and record the reasoning.
6. Decide explicitly whether a corrective action is warranted, and record the decision either way.
7. Close the report once disposition is complete, keeping any corrective action open separately.
8. Review them in aggregate monthly — the patterns are worth more than any single report.

The aggregate view is the point

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.

For engineered equipment, the cheapest place to find these problems is before shipment. A factory acceptance test runs the equipment against an agreed procedure at the manufacturer, with the buyer watching, so deviations are fixed at the factory rather than on site.

Faults found after delivery need their own route. A warranty claim process defines what is covered, what evidence is required and how long assessment takes, which is what keeps disputes out of the sales relationship.

Raising them without friction

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.

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.