Putting a clock on a corrective action

The corrective action request is the least loved artefact in apparel quality. It is raised at the end of an inspection, sent as an attachment, and then it enters a negotiation that has no clock and no owner.

Not because factories are unwilling. Because the request arrives detached from the thing it is about. By the time it is read, the line has moved on, the operator has changed, and the photograph is in a different file from the request. Answering it costs more than ignoring it, so it gets ignored until someone escalates.

The fix is not a stricter policy, it is a shorter distance. When the defect is logged, the request is raised on that defect, with the photograph already attached and a deadline already running. Nobody has to open anything to know what is being asked or when it is due.

Twenty-four hours is not arbitrary. It is short enough that the line is still running the same style with the same operators, which is the only window where a correction can actually be verified rather than promised.

The chasing stops being a person and starts being a state. An open CAR older than 24 hours is visible to the factory and the buyer at the same time, on the same record. Nobody has to send the email that asks whether the email was received.

The second-order effect is the useful one. Once the clock is visible, the argument moves from whether a correction happened to whether it worked — which is the argument worth having.

A CAR is not closed because the factory replied. It is closed because someone verified, on the record, that the defect is no longer occurring. If your system lets a reply close a request, your open-CAR count is a measure of correspondence, not of quality.