Root cause: “operator error”
It's always operator error. The operator has been retrained eleven times. The operator is now the most trained person in the building. The fixture still wobbles.
Dispositions as a Service (DaaS)
Why fix the process
when you can accept the part?
Use As Is™ is the industry's leading* disposition. Trusted by material review boards everywhere to make nonconformances disappear — from the paperwork, not the product.
Nonconformances dispositioned this visit: 0. Processes fixed: 0.
* by volume. So, so much volume.
Nonconformance Report
NCR-2026-∞
- Part number
- ALL OF THEM
- Qty affected
- yes
- Requirement
- .500 ± .005
- Actual
- .512, measured confidently
- Description of nonconformance
- See attached photo. Photo lost.
- Root cause
- Operator error (pre-filled)
- Corrective action
- Operator retrained (again)
- Effectiveness verified
- TBD — open since 2019
Disposition
- Rework
- Repair
- Scrap
- Return to supplier
- Use as is
under protestQuality
sureEngineering
Customer
100%
of nonconformances dispositioned (eventually)
0
processes changed
47×
the same NCR, dispositioned like new every time
5
whys asked — two answered, budget exhausted
The Problem
Somewhere between “root cause” and “corrective action,”
the industry found a shortcut.
Fixing a process is slow, expensive, and requires admitting something. A disposition is a checkbox. Guess which one made it into the standard work.
Corrective action: an email
A PDF was attached. Read receipts were not enabled. Effectiveness will be verified at the next audit finding, which will be the same finding.
The CAPA graveyard
Where corrective actions go to age with dignity. Opened in 2019. Still breathing. Reassigned four times. The current owner left the company in 2023.
Recurrence, or as we call it, “repeat business”
The same nonconformance returns every quarter, like an old friend, or a mortgage payment. Each visit gets a fresh NCR number so it feels new.
The Solution™
Everything you need to keep shipping it.
Our full-stack disposition platform meets your quality system exactly where it is: in a meeting, deciding not to change anything.
One-Click Disposition™
Skip the review board. Skip the justification. Skip straight to acceptance. The part was always going to ship anyway — we just make it official faster.
Root Cause Theater®
We ask “why” five times, answer twice, and write “operator error” in the box regardless. Fishbone diagram included (decorative).
MRB Autopilot
Standing meeting. Standing agenda. Standing outcome. Now with 100% less engineering justification and a calendar hold until the heat death of the universe.
Waiver Wizard
Auto-generates customer concessions with “no impact to form, fit, or function” pre-filled. Function untested. Fit assumed. Form is whatever it is now.
Tribal Knowledge Sync™
Everything Gary knows, still not written down — but now it's in the cloud. (It is not in the cloud. It's still just Gary. Do not let Gary retire.)
CAPA Graveyard-as-a-Service
Perpetual, dignified storage for corrective actions that will never close. Includes an annual “still open” notification, for closure. Emotional, not procedural.
Product demo — free trial, no card, no gage study
Measure It Until It Fits™
The feature is .512. The print says .500 ± .005. That's a scrap conversation — unless you remember that measurement has variation too, and variation has a tail. Keep measuring. Eventually the gage tells you what you need to hear. Record that one.
Digital indicator
.----
Awaiting measurement
- Requirement
- Ø.500 ± .005
- Actual size
- .512 (unbothered)
- Last gage R&R
- not performed
- Gage vs. tolerance
- 300%
Take a measurement. It will not go well the first time. Persevere.
Measurement readings versus the tolerance band
No measurements taken yet.
- Measurements taken
- 0
- Read in tolerance
- 0
- Recorded on the report
- 0
- Deemed “not representative”
- 0
The part never changed. Only the number on the report did. That's the product.
Pricing
Pick the plan that matches your commitment to not fixing it.
As Is
Free forever, like your backlog
The stamp. That's it. That's the product.
- One (1) red stamp
- Unlimited nonconformances
- Zero root cause analysis
- Recurrence guaranteed
Most popular, unfortunately
As Is Pro
$99 / mo, per escape
Everything in As Is, plus plausible deniability.
- “Customer never measures that anyway” certification
- Pre-approved waiver language
- Blame routing — auto-assigns “operator error”
- 8D template with sections 4–7 grayed out
Enterprise As Is
Call us we won't answer
For organizations where the disposition is the process.
- Unlimited recurrence
- Dedicated scapegoat
- MRB on retainer
- Audit-season surge support
- Root Cause Theater® box seats
All plans include our industry-standard SLA: the nonconformance will recur before your invoice does.
Testimonials
Fabricated, like your root cause.
“We dispositioned the same nonconformance forty-seven times last year. With Use As Is, it finally feels like a process.”
“Our corrective action was to retrain the operator. The operator quit in 2021. The CAPA is still open.”
“I asked ‘why’ a fifth time and was escorted from the building.”
“Form, fit, and function were unaffected. Also unverified.”
“We measured it eleven times and recorded the eleventh. Technically, that is a measurement system.”
Interactive Training Module
Disposition This!
Our flagship simulator. Drop nonconforming parts of ridiculous geometry through 100% Inspection (80% effective, as always) and into the disposition bin of destiny. Rework costs time, scrap costs money — but that big red bin in the middle just moves parts. Hit quota before the shift ends. Customer escapes will find you either way.
Play Disposition This!Counts as annual training. It does not count as annual training.
FAQ
Frequently avoided questions.
Is Use As Is a real service?
No. It's satire. But if your review board's default disposition is “use as is,” you're already a customer — you're just not paying us.
Isn't “use as is” a legitimate disposition?
Absolutely — with engineering justification, documented risk, customer approval where required, and rarity. It's a decision about one part. It becomes a problem when it's a decision about every part, forever, in lieu of fixing anything.
What's wrong with retraining the operator?
Nothing — the first time. By the fourth time, the training isn't the corrective action. It's the recurrence.
But the gage said it was good.
Which gage? The one you picked up after the first three disagreed with you? Measurement is a process too, and it has variation like any other. If nobody has ever quantified that variation — a gage R&R — then “the gage said so” is a statement of faith, not a measurement. Our demo above is rigged, but only by about as much as a gage that eats 300% of the tolerance. Those exist. You've used one.
Our customer never measures that dimension anyway.
That's not a question. (See our Pro plan.)
Will this website fix my process?
No. Nothing on this website will fix your process. That is, in fact, the entire point of this website.
OK. Real talk.
A disposition answers “what do we do with this part?”
It will never answer “why did this happen?”
That second question takes actual work: containment that actually contains. A root cause you could defend to your grumpiest customer. Corrective action that changes the process — the tooling, the fixture, the work instruction, the design — not just the operator's training record. And an effectiveness check backed by data, not vibes.
“Use as is” has a place in that system: rare, justified, documented. When it's your default, it isn't a disposition anymore. It's a business model — and the costs show up somewhere your ERP doesn't have a column for.
This site was built by Jonathan Batson — a quality professional (CMM programming, GD&T, quality systems) who has sat in enough MRB meetings to earn the right to make fun of them.
Ready to actually fix the process? jbprecisionmetrology.com