What it asks for. The organisation must continually improve the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of the management system and, when a nonconformity occurs, react to it, address its causes and take corrective action.
In practice. Nonconformities from audits, incidents, metrics and staff feedback are logged, analysed for root cause and corrected, and the effectiveness of the corrective action is checked. Similar problems elsewhere are looked for. Improvement opportunities feed back into planning and management review. Evidence includes a nonconformity and corrective action log with root cause analysis, closure evidence and verification of effectiveness.
Common gaps. Corrective actions frequently fix the symptom without addressing the cause, so the same finding reappears at the next audit. Actions are closed without checking they worked, and improvement is treated as something done only when an auditor raises an issue.