Good morning everyone,

We are looking to expand our TS 16949 internal audit team to include production employees but want to make sure that we get the right employees for the job.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what type of questions should be asked of production employees during the interview process?

Thanks in advance,
Dianna

Are you looking for people to do internal quality systems audits, manufacturing process audits or product audits? Why are you expanding the audit program to include them, may I ask? Who has been doing them until now?

I wouldn't be interviewing people until you had a better idea of what qualifications you're looking for in an auditor. Some folks may interview well, but have have to deal with some undesirable traits which won't be uncovered until later.

Do you have some ideas of what competencies your auditors should posses?

Sorry not to answer the question posted, but if you are to make a success of your audits, just interviewing some people (volunteers?) won't be sufficient!

Andy

You may want to look at the audit standard (19010 or 19011, can't remember which) and see what it says about auditor characteristics/skills, and let that guide some of what you look for during an interview.

However, as a previous poster indicated, a lot depends on what types of audits they'll be doing, and what it is about your audit program that you expect this expansion of auditor backgrounds to address.

P.S. Many of my clients involved production people as auditors. However, if you are ISO/TS 16949, then you may need to pay attention to customer-specific requirements for auditors.

Hi Dianna,

While it is referring to financial auditing, I found relevancy in many of this paper's (www.theiia.org/download.cfm?file=1765)points.

This one (http://www.theiia.org/download.cfm?file=81429) is from the same source. It involves situational interviewing methods and includes a scoring tool.

You can adapt some questions from ASQ's sample exam (http://www.asq.org/pdf/certification/sample-exam/cqa-sample-exam.pdf) that could help you understand the interviewee's QMS wisdom and temperament. Questions like 57, 6, 3, 9, 15 and 16 could work.

Good morning everyone,

We are looking to expand our TS 16949 internal audit team to include production employees but want to make sure that we get the right employees for the job.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what type of questions should be asked of production employees during the interview process?

Thanks in advance,
Dianna

When looking for a good Auditor, I would suggest, that the Person's work history should be considered. Nothing says more about a Production Employee that you are considering to join the Audit team, on what work ethics he has. If this Employee has been with the Company for a lengthy time, what is his philosophy towards quality, does he take Pride in his work and in what Product he makes.
Is this Employee also willing to learn different aspects of you Company. In some Companies, Employees are being cross-trained to operate different machines, or even work in different departments. This is a plus to me if I was to look into getting someone for the Audit team. Especially since I myself am so cross-trained not just in Production but also in Departments, so going into Quality and having to audit I can relate to what it says in our QM ( Procedures ) and see if we are applying them actually.

Just me thinking out loud....:o

First off I’d like to thank everyone for their responses and to answer some of the questions raised:

We are looking to add production employees to the internal audit program for several reasons:

• Currently only salaried staff are internal auditors which due to scheduling conflicts can make it difficult to have audits completed and on time.
• The audit team has been smaller than I’d like and people end up auditing quite frequently (not necessarily a bad thing) which in this case cuts down on the quality of the audits because they “rush” to get the audits completed because they have so much other work to do.
• At times I find that the auditors end up auditing the same procedures/sections too often – not enough variety when taking into account that auditors must be impartial and cannot audit an area relating to their own job functions.
• We’d like to diversify the audit team to include employees from all sections of the business (Quality, Engineering, Finance, HR, Administration, SQE’s, Purchasing and Production)
• This will also give production employees a chance to gain a better understanding of QMS’ and how this relates to them in their job fuction as well as how all departments are inter-linked. As well, they can learn more about our business which can also help bridge the gap sometimes felt between production and upper management.


The internal auditors (including production employees) will complete quality system audits, manufacturing process audits and product audits.
The candidates will be interviewed by, Human Resources and members of plant management and myself. The operations manager will review the list to rule out anyone who may have “ulterior motives” and negative work histories.

The auditors will have specific TS 16949 and core tools training. Once the training is complete, new auditors will be “buddied” with experienced auditors to ease them into the audit process.

Any thoughts??

From my experience, the best auditors are those who like to ask "why?". I would also want to find out why they would like to be auditors, assuming they are not being drafted into that role.

• Currently only salaried staff are internal auditors which due to scheduling conflicts can make it difficult to have audits completed and on time.
• The audit team has been smaller than I’d like and people end up auditing quite frequently (not necessarily a bad thing) which in this case cuts down on the quality of the audits because they “rush” to get the audits completed because they have so much other work to do.
• At times I find that the auditors end up auditing the same procedures/sections too often – not enough variety when taking into account that auditors must be impartial and cannot audit an area relating to their own job functions.
• We’d like to diversify the audit team to include employees from all sections of the business (Quality, Engineering, Finance, HR, Administration, SQE’s, Purchasing and Production)
• This will also give production employees a chance to gain a better understanding of QMS’ and how this relates to them in their job fuction as well as how all departments are inter-linked. As well, they can learn more about our business which can also help bridge the gap sometimes felt between production and upper management.


The internal auditors (including production employees) will complete quality system audits, manufacturing process audits and product audits.
The candidates will be interviewed by, Human Resources and members of plant management and myself. The operations manager will review the list to rule out anyone who may have “ulterior motives” and negative work histories.

The auditors will have specific TS 16949 and core tools training. Once the training is complete, new auditors will be “buddied” with experienced auditors to ease them into the audit process.

Any thoughts??

Just a few............and they affect audit management and planning, not the auditors......:mg:

If your audits focus on aspects of the system which are 'management issues' e.g poorly performing parts of the process etc., why would there be difficulty in scheduling them? If it's on management's radar, they'll make time for their people to do the audit.:yes:

How much time is spent doing these audits, typically? Hours, days? What?

How do you choose a 'scope' or what to audit? If auditors are going over the same ground again and again, then why not find out why, then fix that! Did they prepare and plan not to do this? Did you organize the audits and coach them to prevent it happening?:confused:

If the audits are directed to look into the qms and find out why things aren't performing properly etc. then it's unlikely that the same ground will be plowed over.

Using an audit to train people on the use of the qms is a waste of an audit. Better that management train their people and use this to bridge the gap. Anyone who's learning the system while they audit won't return a good result, IMHO.:nope:

But I do like the idea that you buddy the newbies up with the experienced folks.........:agree1:

These comments are to help discover why audits don't give good results. Putting more (new) auditors in the firing line won't help you get different results unless you change something about the way audits are managed......

Andy