Boy, now that I have picked myself off of the floor I can vent a little. Here we are QS9000 certified. I have been just told by our register that our initial TS upgrade audit wil last 13 days. :confused: :mad: WHY???

I believe that your auditor has to use the annex 3 table in the book "Automotive Certification Scheme for ISO/TS 16949:2002" to determine how many days to audit.

Looking at the table it apears that your auditors believe that you have between 423-507 employees at you facility. These are the dys needed for a initial certification audit.

For a Re-certification audit with this amount of employees it would be be between 6 and 6.5 days.

The book does state that these are minimum days for initial certification and re-certification audits.

:bonk:

The controlling document as noted by dbzman is "Automotive Certification Scheme for ISO/TS 16949:2002" 2nd edition. Per section 4.5, you should be able to reduce audit days by 50% when upgrading from QS-9000, if your scope hasn't changed. If your scope has changed all audit days as listed in the Annex 3 audit days apply, or as modified by section 4.5 or if you adopt the corporate scheme for mare than 1 site.

The IAOB reviews each ISO/TS audit report from the registrar, and the information we received from our registrar and our auditor was that they are being very stringent in requiring that the initial audit days required by the annex be applied. We're a small bulk material producer with 3 sites - 1 with 5 employees, 1 with 48 employees, and headquartesr which has 160 employees. Our audit days for upgrading from joint registration to ISO 9001:2000 & QS-9000 to ISO 9001:2000 & ISO/TS were 8 total.

Frustating isn't it? But so far the IAOB (automotive companies) are calling the shots.

Frustrating is a good word but I prefer ignorant. Seems to me a loty of people are getting some fairly fat wallets here. Sorry for the edge in tone but I am thoroughly frustrated. I get the feeling IAOB has the viewpoint of "Oh you were QS 9000 certified. That's nice. You have successfully passed these audits for years with 0 non conformances. Good Job! But you know what....who cares! Have a nice day!"

Well thanks guys I feel better now! :bonk: :frust:

Refer to the IAOB website; FAQ, #3 - Audit day calculations. This is the "official" method the CB will use to determine the minimum audit day requirement. In some cases it will be different than the table in the "rules".
After using this method you find that it is different than your CB then you should discuss, either with you r CB or the IAOB.