Practical Tips from SQMC Auditors

By Karen MacKenzie
SQMC Associate

Here are some general tips for effective auditing from SQMC’s auditors. . Although the comments are directed primarily at the first-party (or internal) audit, most of the tips are equally valid for second-and third-party audits.

Plan your audits

Make sure that the audit schedule and the defined frequencies reflect your organisation's needs. You must give appropriate consideration to criticality of activities, identification of areas that are more subject to change or to turnover of personnel, and processes that have experienced problems or breakdowns. It is essential that you review your audit schedule periodically and revise it based on these considerations and on audit findings and analysis of other data in the organisation’s systems.

If you have a mature product line and no new hires in recent history, assessing training more than once a year is a redundant paper exercise. Conversely, if you handle a lot of customer-owned materials, and their requirements vary significantly, ensure that those activities are included in the schedule at a greater frequency.

Once you've established your audit schedule, stick to it. Don't get into the habit of revising dates and moving audits off to the next month to accommodate other people's priorities. As long as you allow it, some individuals will always find a way to put you off. Acceding to procrastination perpetuates the impression that auditing is an 'extra' task to be performed only when time permits. This mindset devalues the process and minimises the organisation's ability to derive useful and timely information.

Prepare for the audit

Have an audit plan. Probably the single best reason to have a plan and to communicate it is so that you can tell people in advance when you'll be in their area – it is common courtesy and courtesy is an important attribute. This goes a long way toward dispelling the witch-hunt mentality with which people usually perceive the arrival of an auditor. Failing to alert process owners of planned audits carries other negative consequences: as long as individuals feel that an audit is a surprise attack designed to catch them in error, they'll conceal problems. They won't look upon the audit as a fact-finding event designed to foster a culture of improvement. They'll look upon it with the dread of miscreants afraid to be punished for their transgressions - even though they've probably done nothing wrong. Problems recur cyclically because they're covered up out of fear of punitive action.

Efficiency is another reason for having an audit plan - it saves time. The auditor has a sequence that makes the audit flow smoothly and logically from input to output through a series of processes. Effective planning brings an element of lean management to the auditing process. It minimises the backtracking and repeat visits that eat up precious time without adding value.

Review the documents that describe the processes you'll be auditing. This helps you to frame the questions you'll be asking the auditee, and ultimately will promote more comprehensive answers. Reading the documents ahead of time also helps you distinguish the most critical requirements and the points at which ownership of a product (or process) changes to a new person or function.

Review the last audit report and any corrective action requests that emerged. This will help you to assess if things have improved or if a problem has persisted or deteriorated.. If your corrective action process is well-linked to your internal audits, you can verify the implementation and effectiveness of corrective actions as part of the audit process. This applies to all corrective actions, regardless of origin. One of the areas in which this is particularly useful is in verifying the results of supplier corrective actions. Through the questions that you ask, you can augment purchasing staff's understanding of the verification process. This helps them to discern if the response they've received from a supplier actually provides evidence of an effective action plan. Without such verification, all the purchasing department really has is evidence that the supplier can fill out a form. Opportunities for learning and improvement are lost.

Easy questions an auditor might ask are: 'How do you know that the plan worked?'... 'Have you asked them to send final test reports for the last orders they've shipped us so we can review them against our own records?' In this way, the auditor works to increase other individuals' comprehension of how the organisation's QMS works to improve their processes - in this scenario, through the effectiveness and productivity of supplier relationships.

You may wish to prepare a checklist. Even if your organisation uses predetermined checklists, it's important to prepare and revise them based on the documents you've reviewed so that the audit trail you map out is complete. This also helps you to develop questions so you don't waste time, and it serves to keep you from meandering outside of the scope of the audit. However, always remember the checklist is the servant and not the master of the auditor.

Use accepted audit practices

Regardless of whether this is an internal or an external audit, there's no excuse for ignoring good audit practices.

You need to conduct an opening meeting, with a whole list of items that must be covered: scope, purpose, standard, duration, schedule, confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements, rules for reporting nonconformities, safety equipment, escorts and, if appropriate, the appeals process.

It's appropriate to have an abbreviated version that outlines what processes are being audited, how long you expect the audit to take and the individuals you may wish to interview. Arriving in an area and beginning the audit without some initial remarks or a simple greeting only serves to increase tension and the likelihood of alienating those who can facilitate a productive audit.

Following these basic audit practices should ensure that the information management gets is accurate, reflects the status of the organisation and is detailed enough so that it results in good decisions. This is what makes audits effective. Anything less is a meaningless paper shuffle

If you wish to engage an SQMC internal auditor to carry out audits or to work with your own internal auditors or audit team, or would like them to evaluate your internal audit process, then please contact our Head of Division, David Ingham, to discuss.

"[SQMC's Auditors] were real people - not boring QA clones with pin-stripe suits."

Ministry of Defence

TOP RELATED PAGES:

10 Good Reasons to Choose SQMC
Who / What is IRCA?
SQMC Consultants, Auditors & Tutors
Client Testimonials
Consultancy Services
Audit Services
Identify YOUR Training Needs
SQMC Training Courses
Training Calendar: Public Dates
Training Course Fees
In-house & Bespoke Training from SQMC
SQMC Training Centres

OTHER RELATED PAGES:

Download Prospectus
Frequently Asked Questions
Auditing / Training Multimedia
List of Leading ISO and BS Standards