CAPA / 8D Manager
Run corrective and preventive actions through a disciplined 5-Why or 8D workflow - problem, containment, root cause, action, verification, effectiveness - with owners, due dates, and approval gates, so CAPAs actually close instead of going stale.
A login-protected CAPA tool that opens a CAPA from a problem, captures containment, root cause, actions, owners and dates, enforces manager approval of the plan, verifies effectiveness before closure, sends overdue reminders, and exports a clean CAPA register CSV.
Before you start
- A free Supabase account
- A free Vercel account
- A free Resend account (for overdue-action reminders)
- Your current CAPA/NCR process and numbering convention handy
The problem this kills
Your CAPAs are scattered across spreadsheets, email threads, and someone's memory. A nonconformance gets logged, an action gets assigned, and then... nothing. Three months later an auditor asks for evidence that the corrective action was effective, and you're scrolling through Outlook trying to reconstruct what happened. Half your "closed" CAPAs were closed because they got old, not because the problem was actually fixed.
The discipline exists - 8D, 5-Why, containment, root cause, effectiveness checks - but the spreadsheet doesn't enforce any of it. Anyone can mark a CAPA closed with an empty root-cause field. Nobody gets nudged when an action goes overdue. And there's no clean register to hand an auditor or a customer.
What you'll build
A small internal web app that runs every CAPA through the steps in order and won't let people skip them. You open a CAPA from a problem (linked to its source NCR or complaint), capture containment, drive a structured root-cause analysis, assign corrective and preventive actions with owners and due dates, and route the plan to the quality manager for approval. After the actions are done, you record an effectiveness verification - and only then can the manager approve closure. Overdue actions trigger email reminders. At any time you can export the full CAPA register as a CSV.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan opens by interviewing you about your business - your current CAPA process, your NCR/complaint sources, your CAPA numbering convention, whether you run 8D or 5-Why, your typical and peak volumes, who approves what, and your messy edge cases. It reflects a short tailored spec back to you for a thumbs-up, then shapes the data model, the workflow steps, the validations, and every later build step around your real answers - so you get a tool that matches how your plant actually works, not a generic template.
From there it walks you step by step through building the database, the login, the CAPA workflow screens, the approval gates, the overdue-reminder emails, and the register export - each step ending with a ready-to-paste prompt for your AI coding agent.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login so only your quality team can use the tool.
- Row-level security so people only ever see their own organization's CAPAs.
- A complete audit trail - who initiated, who approved the plan, who verified effectiveness, who closed, and when.
- A hard human-in-the-loop gate - the quality manager approves the root cause and corrective-action plan, and approves closure only after effectiveness is verified. The AI drafts; a person commits.
- Step enforcement - you cannot close a CAPA without a documented root cause and a passed effectiveness verification.
- Duplicate guards - the CAPA number is the dedupe key, so the same CAPA can't be opened or imported twice.
Who it's for
Quality managers, quality engineers, and continuous-improvement leads in manufacturing who are tired of CAPAs dying in spreadsheets and want auditable, enforced closure - without buying a heavyweight QMS or waiting on IT.
You've got this. Paste the first prompt and let the interview tailor it to your plant.