Today, CAPA can be applied across many disciplines like manufacturing; product design; testing verification and validation; distribution; shipping and transport and packaging. It has become an important tool for Edelmann India which, with a team of over 280 professionals, has a presence across eleven locations in India with offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and staffed representations at Lucknow, Bhubaneshwar and Jamshedpur.

“The ultimate purpose of CAPA is to assure the problem can never be experienced again,” said Munish Agarwal, managing director of Edelmann India. It is a powerful tool for quality management and can be easily understood from its nomenclature. Agarwal said, “Corrective Action means correcting the error or problem with respect to the possible solution which is acceptable to all stakeholders and Preventive Action means stopping the occurrence of the above incident by going back to the process and finding any flaw in the process or finding any lack of control there in the process.”

The approach of CAPA is to target the root cause and eliminate it. When a problem occurs, it is often just a symptom of the real issue. When a symptom is observed or communicated, a systematic set of activities are initiated. The activities are intended to describe the problem in sufficient detail so that the team can identify a root cause path. Once a root cause path is selected, a permanent corrective action is identified, verified, implemented and validated. Preventive Action occurs after the physical root cause has been identified and permanent corrective action has been validated. It recognises the value of the information and actions taken during the Corrective Action function. This information is shared within the organisation.

Agarwal felt that it is this very approach that makes it difficult for CAPA to get implemented in India. He said, “We have seen that in India there is no orientation of people, right from supervisors to managers, to work under CAPA environment.” Even consultants fail to achieve the task because they do not understand the business. Add to it the lack of qualified operators, supervisors and managers. “Here we do not frame the process in the beginning and do not go back to the process if something wrong happens. Neither do we work with the internal audit culture in the organisation,” said Agarwal. "It has to become the way of life for an organisation and get inculcated in the organisation's DNA.”

Edelmann India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany-based Edelmann GmbH. As a whole, the globally operating Edelmann Group employs more than 2,800 people in its 19 plants worldwide.

The Edelmann Group designs and manufactures folding cartons and rigid boxes for the healthcare sector, including prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and diagnostic tools; the beauty care sector—including perfume, skincare cosmetics, makeup and hair color—and consumer brands that sell home electronics and multimedia, wine and spirits, food and confectionary, and tobacco and other nonfood products.