What is the difference between Preventive Action And Corrective Action

Corrective Action 

• Locate and document the root cause of the nonconformity.
• Scan the entire system to ensure no other similar nonconformity could occur.
• Analyze the effect such a nonconformity may have had on a product or service produced before the nonconformity was discovered, and take action appropriate to the severity of the situation by either recalling the product, notifying the customer, downgrading or scrapping product.
• Establish thorough follow-up to ensure the correction is effective and recurrence has been prevented.

Preventive Action 

• Take proactive steps to ensure a potential nonconformity does not occur.
• Employ process and system analysis to determine how to build in safeguards and process changes to prevent nonconformance. For example, use a failure mode and effects analysis to identify risks and potential deficiencies and to set priorities for improvement.

You need to follow the following3 steps for any problem solving -

1. Correction - Eliminating the identified defect

2. Corrective action - Action for Preventing re-currence of same defect

3. Preventive action - Action for preventing the occurence of the defects (This will be result of any issue in one part, extended to many part or may be the result of potential failure analysis, etc)

A preventive action is what you do to prevent something from happening.

A corrective action is what you do to correct something which happend and you see that it needs to be corrected.