Preventive Action

An action taken to eliminate the root cause of a detected nonconformity, failure, or undesirable situation to prevent its recurrence. Corrective actions address why something went wrong, not just the immediate symptoms. They are distinguished from immediate actions (containment) and preventive actions (proactive measures for potential future problems).

A systematic, proactive methodology for evaluating a process, product, or design to identify all possible failure modes, determine their effects on system performance, rank them by risk priority, and recommend actions to reduce or eliminate the highest risks. FMEA examines each component's potential failure modes, their causes, effects at local/system/end levels, current controls, and risk priority numbers.

An action specifically designed to reduce the probability or consequence of an identified risk. Mitigation actions differ from corrective actions (which address root causes of occurred failures) in that they proactively reduce risk for potential future events. They are tracked in the risk register and linked to the specific risk they address.

A closed-loop process for systematically reporting failures, analyzing their root causes, implementing corrective actions, and verifying that those actions effectively prevent recurrence. FRACAS captures failure data, triggers investigation based on severity, tracks corrective action implementation, and feeds lessons learned back into the design, maintenance, and operating procedures.