Key Definitions from the International Organization for Standardization

Corrective actions are steps that are taken to remove the causes of an existing nonconformity or to make quality improvements. Corrective actions address actual problems. In general, the corrective action process can be thought of as a problem solving process.

According to ISO 9000:2000 the definition of corrective action is: "Action to eliminate the cause of a detected nonconformity or other undesirable situation."Corrective actions are therefore steps that are taken to remove the causes of an existing nonconformity or to make quality improvements. In contrast with that a correction would be any action to eliminate a detected nonconformity.

A supplier is an organization that provides products or services to customers. Customers can be either internal or external to the supplier organization.