Sorting Cost
Meaning ~ Expense of manually isolating non-conforming items from a suspect shipment to secure a clean point for the production line without halts.
Containment Action
Meaning
An immediate corrective measure isolates all potentially defective parts from the production stream to prevent them from reaching the customer. This containment action is triggered the moment a non-conformity is identified during a quality check or through a customer complaint. It creates a physical and digital barrier around the suspect inventory while further investigations determine the root cause of the error.
Incident Response
Identification of a failure leads to the sorting of every item in the current work in progress. It protects the integrity of future shipments by stopping the forward movement of all items created under similar conditions.
Risk Isolation
Implementing these steps requires a precise count of items already at the warehouse or in transit. A containment action succeeds only when all locations in the supply chain are notified to hold the batch codes in question. Costs include the labour hours required to inspect every single item and the missed deadlines caused by the temporary production pause.
If a containment action fails to catch the defects, the company faces expensive field recalls and potential liability claims from downstream users.
Operational Security
Maintaining high discipline during this phase ensures that only verified items remain in the active inventory. A successful containment action limits financial damage to the affected batches without compromising the entire contract.
Quality Audit
Meaning ~ A quality audit is a structured assessment of a manufacturer's operational systems and process controls executed to verify production capacity.