Organizational processes often require improvements, and with these developments they are designed to improve the productivity of individual processes and of the entire organization.

The enhancements of structural processes take different forms and are often designed to achieve varied goals. Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA), is one of the most common measures aimed at improving performance in a corporate environment. CAPA is combination of actions implemented at different levels of production to rectify and eliminate occurrence and re-occurrence of undesired situations within the production cycle.

These actions are taken to correct and to avoid re-occurrence of nonperformance brought about by different factors. Malfunctions can occur at any level of production and can affect various instruments of productions including computer systems. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is part of the computer systems prone to failures.

ERP as a business process management software comprises of integrated applications and automates most of the business activities. The Firm’s ERP is part of the tools used in production and like any other business process management tool, it can be affected by nonperformance failures.

CAPA is an important regulatory requirement for most organizations, it brings with it various beneficial results when it is well implemented. It reduces liabilities and prevent losses that come about with ERP failures. The preventive and corrective actions can be automated and designed to cover all the modules of the organization’s ERP.

The managerial computer system is often broken down into its various components for easy isolation of nonperformance situations. Isolating the various modules of an ERP allows the organization to easily identify risks and possible causes of failure. Disasters are then dealt with in isolation while the rest of the system is working as expected. This will ensure that the company continues with other operations despite having a failure on one part of the system.

Preventive and corrective actions in an ERP often takes place throughout the life cycle of the software suite. CAPA has to be part of an integrated quality management system. The quality management system collects information of the risks, weaknesses and possible causes of ERP failures per module and for the entire system. Whenever errors occur on the ERP, the corrective team examines and evaluates the situation and digs out for the causes. Once the root cause is established, the issue is addressed with an aim to prevent future occurrence.

Every CAPA plan in an ERP system aims at ensuring that users of the ERP are able to carry out their daily processes at all times. Documentation is a key process in ensuring that a software system of a company operates smoothly with minimum failures in its processes. Failures and their root causes are documented well to provide an easy reference for effective correction and preventive maintenance processes.

The whole life cycle of an ERP takes different stages, these stages have different processes that need to be well documented. By documenting all the process through which and ERP was implemented and maintained will always provide a reference point to be used in investigating causes of malfunctions and in providing a lasting solution.

The downtime is minimized by a clear work plan and with the help of proper documents that can lead to the root cause. Documents are therefore very important in correcting and preventing disasters related to the ERP in place.

Well written and maintained documents will help in correcting and preventing calamities even long after the developers and implementation personnel of the ERP have left the company. CAPA is a measure that keeps an organization’s processes at check to avoid failures and to ensure business continuity at all times. ERPs are integrated computer systems used to manage administrative and productive activities in a firm.

For a company to be efficient in its activities, it has ensure that all processes are running smoothly. When the computer systems fail, there is need for a corrective measure that takes back the organization to the normal working entity it has been. This needs to be within the shortest time possible. Such failures should be minimized for a smooth operation and to ensure short and long term goals are achieved. Companies need to put the most suitable Corrective and Preventive action plan in place to keep them safe from total failures brought about by system malfunctions.