Employ Multiple Condition Report Types

Effective condition report forms balance the need for data with the ease of problem reporting. Enough data must be collected to enable problem investigation, prioritization, and resolution. Concurrently, the administrative burden of completing a condition report must be minimized to facilitate issue reporting.

Information needs vary based on the type of issue being reported and the associated regulatory requirements. In order to ensure the appropriate information is gathered while also minimizing the administrative burden, situation specific condition reports should be used.[wcm_restrict plans=”48836, 25542, 25653″]

Basic Condition Report Type

Most organizations employ a basic condition report type that requires only the minimum data common to all condition reports. (See StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program article, Minimum Condition Report Data Requirements) This data includes:

Condition Report Author
Location, System, Equipment, Component, Procedure
Description of the Condition
Date/Time of Condition Occurrence, Discovery, or Condition Report Creation

These basic forms may also include a few optional fields to facilitate condition report review, processing, search, and analysis including:

Condition Report Short Title
Significance Level (See StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program article – Condition Report Prioritization)
Immediate and Follow-up Corrective Actions
Causal Codes (See StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program best practice article – Condition Report Causal Codes)

Functional Report Types

While most performance deficiencies can be effectively captured using the basic condition report type, a few specialty reports are best supported by a unique condition report type. Examples of these reports and their associated issues include:

Basic Condition Report Type – Adverse equipment (maintenance work requests), analysis (engineering work request), document (procedure, manual, drawing, etcetera change requests), behavior (human performance errors), event (adverse operational incident), and trend (aggregate performance trend analysis) reports
Software/Technology Report Type – Information technology trouble report or change request
Customer Trouble Report Type – Customer service work request or trouble report

Regulatory Report Types

Some business units, divisions, or locations are subject to specific regulatory regimes associated with their industry, operations or location. To the extent that these regulatory requirements demand additional information, reviews, and/or analysis, regulation-specific condition report types should be developed.

Note that these condition report types are typically associated with only one or a few business units, divisions, or locations and their availability should be limited to those entities so to minimize the administrative burden of the other organization groups. For those organizations using corrective action program supporting software, this can be achieved by limiting access to condition report types based on login location. For paper-based systems, only applicable condition report type forms should be made available at each organization location.

Final Thought…

A large number of condition report types also represents a high administrative burden. In our experience, use of more than a few condition report types confuses employees who are then less likely to report deficiencies, events, and performance improvement opportunities. For this reason, care must be taken when introducing specialty condition report types.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”48836, 25542, 25653″]

Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Subscribe Now!

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Corrective Action Program Best Practice 3 – Employ Multiple Condition Report Types for just $2!

Access the Article Now!

[/wcm_nonmember]

About the Author

Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.