Register a nonconformity or incident and follow it to closure

Nonconformities, deviations and incidents are registered in your company’s nonconformity module, a standard document module that may be called NCR, Avvik or something else in your company. Anyone with the Create right on the module registers one: open the module in the left menu, click New followed by the module name, describe what happened and send it to the person who processes it. The processor accepts it with the green button or rejects it back with the red button, assesses and categorises it, creates corrective actions, and sends it on for verification. When the last step is approved and every linked action is closed, the document is published and shows its final status. The fields, sections, statuses and receivers are your company’s own setup; the examples on this page come from an Avvik module in Antenor’s demonstration setup of ABMS (“the example Avvik module” below), so your module may differ.

Before you start

To register, you need the Create right on the module’s row; to open nonconformities, the Read right. Your user administrator sets these; see The Users page and the rights table. If you cannot find the module or New under it, your company may not have the module or you may lack the right; see The top bar and the left menu.
To process a nonconformity, you must be among the possible receivers of that step, as a named user, through your level on the module or through an access group. Publishing needs the Approve right on the module’s row. See Workflow steps, statuses, receivers and notifications.
To create corrective actions, you need access to the Action Manager; see Create an action and send it to someone.

Steps

1. Register what happened. In the left menu, open the module and click New followed by the module name (for example New NCR), or click New document on the dashboard and choose the module. Type a title in “Enter title here” and fill in the fields of the first section; fields marked * (Required) must be filled in. Antenor’s advice: describe the facts of what happened, and leave out personal or sensitive information; a processor can reject a registration that contains it. Add photos or files with the paper clip, by dragging them onto the document, or with the phone camera. See Fill in the fields of a document and Add attachments to a document.

2. Send it to the processor. Click the paper-plane button (Send for approval), choose the receiver in the Send or approve dialog (in the example Avvik module, Mottaker), optionally write a Message, and click Send. See Create a document and send it for approval.

3. Accept or reject (processor). The processor opens the document from the e-mail or from Documents awaiting your approval on the dashboard, and checks that the registration is complete and that they are the right person to process it. The green button takes over the step; the red button rejects it back to the person who registered it, with a message saying why. To ask colleagues for information, use the comments panel. See Approve or reject a document you received and Comment on a document and mention colleagues.

4. Assess and categorise. In Antenor’s published guide for NCR, the processing section has fields that categorise the case and record its root cause; these values are what reports and KPI scorecards count, so fill them in carefully. The example Avvik module, for example, has fields such as Type hendelse, Avdeling, Prosess, Konsekvens and Rotårsak. If the module has a risk field, its value decides what comes next: with a value in the range your module allows (in Antenor’s guide a low risk: green, yellow or NA), the step may offer Observation, which publishes the document at once; with other values the document must go through the normal verification. Which values allow an observation depends on how your module is set up. See Save a document as an observation.

5. Create corrective actions. In edit mode, click the flag (Create new action). Describe the problem under Findings / Background: and what to do under Suggested Actions:, set the Due date and the Responsible, and click Send. The responsible person carries it out and sends it back to you; when you accept the work, the action is closed. See Create an action and send it to someone and Handle an action you received.

6. Verify and close. Send the document on to the next step, for example to the person who verifies it, or approve it with the green check (Approve) if you hold the last section. The document is published only when the last step is approved and every linked action is closed.

7. Find and follow up nonconformities. Use the module’s reports, the dashboard search and KPI scorecards; see “Find and report on nonconformities” below.

What you should see

In lists and reports, the document’s status follows its steps: the first status while it is at the first step (in the example Avvik module New), then the statuses your company has set for the sections, with “- Waiting For Approval” added while a step that has been sent is not yet taken over by its receiver. See Workflow steps, statuses, receivers and notifications. In the example Avvik module the statuses are New, Being processed, Closed - not verified, and Closed and Verified. When the document is published, the person who registered it gets an e-mail, unless they approved its last step themselves, and everyone who follows the document gets one too; see Document e-mails: subjects, recipients, language and sender. The linked actions are listed in the document’s Actions view.

Find and report on nonconformities

Your own cases. The dashboard boxes show what is waiting for you, what you are working on and what you have sent; see The dashboard.
Reports. Open the module in the left menu, or Reports, and choose a report. A report lists the module’s documents with columns such as title, status, responsible and the module’s own fields, for example “Alle avvik - alle felt” in Antenor’s demonstration setup. You can search, filter and export it. See Find and read a standard report and Search and filter a report for yourself.
Search. The dashboard search finds published documents by title or ID; see Search for a document.
KPI. A KPI scorecard can count the module’s documents per month, by status, by a category such as department, or only those saved as an observation; see Build a useful KPI scorecard.

Good to know

Your company’s module. The module name, fields, sections, statuses and receivers are your company’s own. Your user administrator can change the values in dropdown lists; to have fields, sections or the workflow changed, your company contacts Antenor support (see Get help from Antenor support). See Change the values of a dropdown, radio or checkbox field in a module and What ABMS does not do, and what to do instead.
A button is missing. If you do not see Observation, forwarding or Send externally, the step is not set up for it, or the risk value is too high for an observation.
Open actions block closing. While a linked action is not closed, the green check and Observation show a dialog saying there are actions in progress.
Sent to the wrong person. You cannot take a sent document back. Until the receiver opens it with the green button, they can reject it back to you; for the other ways out, see The document went to the wrong person, or the receiver is away.
Registered by mistake. While the document is at its first step, nobody else has received it and no link to someone outside ABMS is active, you can delete it. Otherwise a user with the Archive right on the module’s row can archive it. See Delete or archive a document and Rights needed for each action on a document.