A CAPA trigger is an event, signal, trend, or defined threshold that starts evaluation for corrective and preventive action. In manufacturing quality systems, it commonly marks the point where an issue is significant enough to review for formal CAPA handling.
CAPA triggers may come from nonconformance records, audit findings, customer complaints, supplier defects, repeated process deviations, escaped defects, adverse trend data, or other quality signals. In software workflows such as QMS, MES, or ERP-integrated quality processes, a trigger may be created manually by a user or automatically from rules, alerts, or recurring issue patterns.
A CAPA trigger is not the same as a CAPA record, root cause, containment action, or corrective action. It starts the decision process. Whether it becomes a formal CAPA depends on the organization’s procedures, risk criteria, and review outcome.