ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the four requirements of clause 10.1, namely: determining and selecting opportunities for improvement; improving products and services; correcting, preventing or reducing undesirable effects; improving quality management system results. Improving product and service conformity is necessary to meet customer requirements and enhance customer satisfaction. Customer needs and expectations change, and therefore it's necessary to predict how they will change and initiate improvement to products and services either by modifying existing products and services or developing new products and services. Improvement in product and service conformity is generally addressed through the corrective action process. This is a problem-solving process which identifies the root cause of variation and closes the gap. Demonstrating that opportunities include correcting, preventing or reducing undesirable effects may be accomplished by presenting evidence of opportunities for improvements that have been addressed by corrective action, process, product and service risk assessments.
