An issue (NCR) is ION’s record of a quality event and the affected material. It links to the parts and inventory, runs, and run steps it touches, and it carries the disposition, approvals, and resolution that decide what happens to that material.
Every issue shows across ION as an orange warning badge with a count on each object it affects. Click the badge to open the linked issues. You raise an issue from a run step, from selected inventory, or from the Issues page, and it moves through a fixed lifecycle until it resolves.
States
An issue moves through four states in order. You advance it with the status button in its header.
| State | What it means |
|---|
| Pending | Open with no disposition set yet. |
| In Progress | A disposition is set and the work it calls for is underway. |
| In Review | The work is done and the issue is waiting on closure approval. |
| Resolved | All required approvals are in and the issue is closed. |
Dispositions
A disposition is the decision applied to the affected inventory. Your org defines the set of disposition types, along with each type’s approval roles and availability behavior, in Administration. You must set a disposition before the issue can leave Pending, and changing the disposition type later returns the issue to Pending so it goes through approval again.
Each disposition type carries an availability behavior that governs when the affected inventory becomes usable again:
| Availability behavior | Effect |
|---|
| Available Immediately | Inventory is available as soon as the disposition is applied. |
| Release on Resolve | Inventory becomes available only when the issue reaches Resolved. |
| Permanently Unavailable | Inventory stays locked out. This is how you scrap inventory through an issue. |
Approval gates
Two gates govern progression, and the disposition type’s roles define who signs off at each:
- Leaving Pending: the disposition type’s approver roles must approve before the issue becomes In Progress.
- Reaching Resolved: the disposition type’s closure roles must approve before the issue resolves.
Each role requires a set number of approvers, and a person can approve once per role. Approvals happen in the Reviews view on the issue. If a disposition type is set to resolve automatically, an approved disposition moves the issue straight to Resolved, skipping In Review unless an extra Resolved-gate approval was added. The number of approvals required is set in Administration.
Editing and locking
You can fully edit an issue while it’s Pending with no approvals yet, and while it’s In Progress. Once an approval is recorded, or the issue reaches In Review or Resolved, the issue becomes read-only. Custom attributes can stay editable in some states, and a setting can allow editing attributes on a resolved issue.
Affected and resolution inventory
An issue tracks two kinds of inventory on its Parts tab: the Problem Part inventory the event affected, and the Resolution Part inventory used to resolve it. Linking both keeps a traceable record of which material a problem touched and which material closed it out. See Associate inventory to an issue.
When an issue covers material that needs different handling, you split or clone it into separate issues, each with its own disposition and share of the inventory. Splitting units off a run onto an issue is driven from the run itself; see Split inventory on a run.
Further Actions
When an issue points to a systemic problem, you escalate it to a Further Action, ION’s corrective and preventive action (CAPA) record. See Further Actions.
Your organization can rename the Cause Condition, Expected Condition, and Disposition fields, so the labels you see may differ.