I'm not an auditor so there's not much I can say here right now, but this post may serve to 'start' the forum off.

Auditor occupations,eh? Thankless jobs..LOL

Actually auditing is a mindset. You can teach just so much, the rest needs to be in your blood. An inquisitive mind, a strong will,and a poker face smile.

There are 2nd & 3rd party auditors and of course the 1st party Company/Corporate auditor. And last but not least the consultant that thinks he can audit.

Been there, done that....anyone want to hear the war stories?

I started this forum because I get lots of e-mail asking "How do I get into auditing?" and such.

As far as war stories - hey - go ahead. You might want to start a new topic with a relevant subject!

Yes - auditing does have an 'art' element.

we'll save the war stories till we need a laugh.

Lets talk about getting into auditing. i started as an internal auditor before they really had a name. Defense requirement. Started going out just looking around,with the mil standard in my hand. I got good at it....stopped some heavy stuff before it became a big issue. was thirsty for knowledge about it, did the CQA thing, but back then there wasn't even a prep course. So I wrote one, and brought along 4 co-workers. Soon got the eye of the corporation, and moved up to corporate audit coordinator. Just had a knack for it, and it was soon recognized.

Now things are different, there are courses out there..most just common sense plus IRCA/RAB required details. I now tutor the registered courses. But my love is auditing. And teaching the 'value added' audit techniques, 'cause I can watch the auditor develop, and then perform.

You need to develop a technique that works for you before you can "do auditing" as a profession. So grab a procedure and get out there in the trenches...make your mind work and see if you have the basic personality and inquisitive mind. You can audit anything, and a good auditor does just that, audits everything. In my class they do a flow chart on a simple every day task (ie making coffee or changing a flat tire) and we then audit that.

Check back for step 2 if you enjoyed your self.......Pay and time away from home is not worth it if you do not ENJOY it.

I can agree with what you said about "in your blood" - I too came up through the ranks, started as an internal auditor, had a knack for the objective testing of the written word, and soon was teaching the CQA materials to would be auditors.

It is very rewarding to objectively audit a process or a system and uncover previously unseen opportunities for improvement.

My Biggest regret as a Management Representative is that I can't do much auditing.

go the registered auditor route, and you have to do xx audite to maintain, and the company will support you as part of your job...enrichment. or do a co-op with other companies in your area as a resourse and audit each other....keeps your mind in it so to speak

Ya.....seems like that...so where will all the auditors come from, new registrations, surveillance.....each company adds more need. A company of 100 people needs 4 audit days, plus a year..a registrar with 100 companies is already needing 2 with no new business !!! think of it.

I don't find it dull. In a couple of months I'll be leaving my comfortable employment and going out looking for consultancy and contract work. I will probably be depending on auditing and audit training to get my business going and keep the head above water. But I don't consider myself to be a natural auditor - certainly not in the terms that the people who gave me my lead assessor training and qualification ten years ago. They had it down as an art. They were concerned about finding what was hidden behind what people say and what was going on from people's body language - knowing what is going on behind the scenes. I have been inclined to disparage this approach in the past but, as I've said before, the prospective move out on my own has knocked some of the brashness out of me. I'm not a people person and I'm not a salesman. I prefer machines, if the truth was known - to work with I mean, not to take out to dinner. I watch registrar auditors going around asking questions and I wonder how they keep everything in their mind and whether they should. When I go to do an audit I pull down the documentation from the server and do an adequacy and compliance evaluation. Then I go to the auditee and watch what they do and look at the records they have regards what they have done. I really don't put much store on what they say, other than to ask them what they do and does it match the documentation.
Very mechanical. Certainly not art. In fact, I call myself a process engineer and see this, along with upgrading the process as process engineering. ISO10011 patches in the administration around the simple assessment that I do, but it doesn't add anything about the vague skills and the artistic part of auditing.
I'm missing something, I know. But what exactly is it and what percentage contribution does it make to the end result?
rgds, John C

If you were a natural auditor, you would have a different outlook on all this. Some people just see it as a job, some actually enjoy it. The ones that enjoy it are truely looking for evidence of compliance, NOT nonconformance. And those that enjoy it, actually believe it is a value added activity.
I for one enjoy it.....lets have a vote, who likes being an auditor?

I'm an auditor (EMS-PA RAB#E052340) but the registrars say that I'm not qualified because I'm not a lead. I can't figure out whether all of these existing EMS-LA's appeared out of thin air or popped out of chickens rearend. When the 14K standard came about there weren't a whole lot of people that had enough previous experiance to qualify under the existing requirements to be a LA. Where did they come from?

I'd like to do auditing. I'd like to do anything related to the field that I spent a lot of money to get qualified to work in.

Randy, if you want experience you have to go to the UK at your expense (if you have contacts there) or do it free......unless you know someone. Perhaps you need to persue lead auditor status on its own, then add the EMS credientials. IRCA is alot easier to work with than RAB, as it has more experience and understands the real world.

oh ya...forgot ... a good approach to it would be to offer your clients to the registrar in exchange for help in your development.

They need clients more than they need trainee auditors.....

[This message has been edited by barb butrym (edited 06 July 1999).]

Howdy All,

Just wanted to inform you readers that I just mailed off my packet to the RAB for advancement to Lead Auditor (14K). It turns out that the EHS management system that I have been working under and administering for almost 4 years is an Equivalent Standard to ISO 14000 according to the RAB.

The whole thing weighed about 2 lbs because we updated the original 1992 version in 1996 and a new copy was required and I had 12 pages of audit logs.

Complicating things is the fact that almost none of the original auditee contacts from 1997 and 1998 is still around, so any verification done by the RAB will be like pulling teeth out of a chicken (these folks we have now can't remember what happened this morning, much less 1 or 2 or 3 years ago).

One thing is guaranteed...the RAB will accept the money I sent.

I just finished the ISO 9000 Lead Auditor course. One of the problems seems to be getting the audit experience to become a LA. I found a group here in Dallas, that provides the experience to become a LA. Anyone looking to get witnessed audits may want to check youru area to see if you have any simular programs. http://www.p6c.com/ASQ.html

CW

As a reminder, http://www.p6c.com/ASQandSIGS/ASIG/ASIG.html has some forms and stuff one might be interested in.

I am currently an SQA Engineer at a company in the UK and passed my IRCA lead assessor about 2 years ago. As part of my job I carry out both process and system audits on suppliers on a regular basis. I think that there is something in your nature that makes you a good auditor, but I learnt a lot from the IRCA course and it changed my whole outlook on auditing and the way that I approached audits in the future. The biggest thing with auditing is experience - the more you do, the better you get because every audit you do teaches you something.

I started in auditing as an internal auditor in 1995 auditing part time to ISO 9002 and then QS 9000. I took a lead auditor course in 1996 and received my certificate and number, but did not pay to get an official title. Auditing made me go back to school from 96-99 part time and get a certificate inTQM in December of 99. In december of 99 I was hired as an ISO coordinator and in February 00 our QMS was registered. I credit my success to geting started in auditing and that has helped me realize several of my dreams. I see auditing and ISO-QS as a way for you to help your company to become a world class operation. Believe it or not. :vfunny:

some of us have been around for a long time and seen the profession (from one side or another) adapt to change and to life in general....

what do you see as the biggest hurdle an auditor has had to adjust to?


IMHO its the auditee.......the auditee has changed, as well as what they expect from an audit....and how they host you. mostly or in part from the education they have recieved...some good .... some not so good..a well hosted/presented audit is a joy to perform. when the auditee can discuss the requirement and present to you why something totaly unconventional works its awesome. On the other hand when its poorly presented, and the system is full of weasle words and lip service, and the auditee is a defensive claud...its a long hard day

Originally posted by barb butrym
IMHO its the auditee.......the auditee has changed, as well as what they expect from an audit....and how they host you. mostly or in part from the education they have recieved...some good .... some not so good..a well hosted/presented audit is a joy to perform. when the auditee can discuss the requirement and present to you why something totaly unconventional works its awesome. On the other hand when its poorly presented, and the system is full of weasle words and lip service, and the auditee is a defensive claud...its a long hard day

Barb,

Good to see you back, we missed ya. I hope that I am in that first group of auditees. I've always tried to look at audits as an opportunity for improvement, not a gotcha there experience. I think that attitudes can play a big part (both ways.) I've had the pleasure of being audited by some really wonderful auditors, they came in without a bunch of "baggage" and we were probably just so green in the beginning that we were totally awed by what we had done. We all walked away at the end feeling good, mainly because nobody looked at the audit as a witch-hunt.

On the other hand, we had an auditer in after we'd been certified to ISO for awhile and moved on to QS that came in with a real bad attitude. He was unhappy about the weather, didn't like our climate, the flight p**sed him off and on and on. He hadn't been there for more than 45 minutes and I knew that nothing I said was going to make him feel better or happier. The harder I tried to smooth his mood and get back on the audit track, the more he neglected to look to see that the system was working. Instead he scoured everything to find something wrong.

He gave us a major on record retention, which I got reduced to an opportunity for improvement. He also got taken off the list of auditors for our plant and am not sure if he still audits at all.

Attitude is everything..Always remember that. If you act like you care about your system and are happy to show it off, chances are that the auditor will appreciate it (in most cases anyway)

Okay guys. I'm a bit new at this you could say. I'm not quite sure I understand the difference between all the different terms you'ved used for the auiditors.

I got into quality in 1999. I had never heard of ISO before that time. The only reason I was hired for the job was because I was very knowledgable of the computer software being used at that time and the company said they could train me on the rest.

When I came into the company the Quality Manager at that time trained me on internal audits and sent me to a 3 or 4 day course on internal auditing. I received a certificated from the Georgia Institute of Technology for that course. The end of last year I attended the Lead Auditor Training Course BVQI offered. It was a week long and very exhausting! I was one of the only two to pass the test and receive a certificate for IATCA QMS Auditor/Senior Auditor and as an IRCA QMS Auditor/Lead Auditor and Internal Auditor.

I too didn't pay the fees to get it official, maybe because I'm not real knowledgable of this entire process.

If you are the Mangement Representative can you not perform the internal audits for the company? The reason I ask is because I've been the designated Management Rep. and I am also the one that performs the internal audits for the company. We do have one other person that performs audits but she only does the ones that don't directly relate to my job.

Any comments would be GREAT!!

Jamie - sounds fine.

Jamie I see nothing wrong with the Mgmt Rep doing internal audits as long as they are not auditing their own work.

ISO GUY,

I've had a really hard time ensuring that. I just created our new audit schedule last week. Before I was auditing our company to death!! I was probably doing about 40 audits a year on a company of about 35 employees. This was in addition to the ones Myra was doing. Not to long ago did I learn that was so UNNECESSARY! In doing this new schedule I've set it up so that when we audit we audit against a certain clause in the standard, as well as, our own QMS and follow it throughout the entire process. Instead of breaking it down into just auditing a particular department. So if your doing product identification and traceability we'll start at receiving and work our way to final inspection. In doing this I've had a hard time making sure that I didn't assign and audit to myself that intermingled with my work. Especially since my job just about touches everything in this company.

Jamie

I also do internal audits, and am the Management Rep. While I will agree with Jamie that my job touches upon almost every aspect of the business, I think audit of areas that are not under my direct control are permissable. On the other hand, as the Management Rep - I don't want my system to be written up, however, I also view non-conformances as an opportunity for improvement.

A great deal of this has to do with professionalism and whether or not you are "gundecking" the system (just operating an ISO system for the cert., not as a way to run the business). Personally, if I saw an audit system that never found any (or found very few) non-conformances during their internal audits, I would be VERY suspiscious. Additionally, I would look at the corrective actions taken as a result of the non-conformances. If I saw a lot of "retraining" as a corrective action - again, I would cast a doubtful eye on the system.

Anyway - hope that helps...

Cheers!!

Take note that ISO9001:2000 is slightly more flexible on this. It now states that you cannot audit your own work, as opposed to the old requirement of not auditing things you have responsibility for. Also the standard now clearly requires objectivity to be stated in the audit report. So an auditor would be allowed to audit the internal audit process, so long as he demonstrated objectivity, and did not audit the actual audits that he did.

Hoorah - one of the better points of ISO9001:2000.

Do I want to be an auditor, yes and no. I enjoy doing audits (internal, supplier, Registration) a great deal, I love meeting new people and talking to the employees of a company (I try to talk to all of them while I am there).

However, my mind set has changed recently. The industry I am in (Medical Device), is a heavily regulated industry and I think what I enjoy even more is running a Quality System. When I started the job I am currently in the company was already certified (how I don’t know). They had their first surveillance audit about 6 months after I started and they were a mess 8 N/C’s were received, I as well as everyone else (with a few exceptions) in the company pulled together and we fixed the issues at hand. We knew we still had some issues to resolve. The company was not doing so well financially and when the next surveillance audit came around a year later (they sent better auditors this time) and we were hit with 7 more N/C’s (a lot of them were because we didn’t have the proper resources to do the job right) with one of them being lack of Mgmt Support, they said they were coming back for a special audit in 6 months and if things were not better our cert. would be pulled. Now it was serious with Mgmt. They didn’t want to lose certification, now it was time to get down and dirty. I was ready to leave because I thought it was a lost cause, then they did something to make me stay, they said ok, they gave me a promotion and a small raise and said ok “you have been telling us what is wrong but we didn’t believe you, we want you to take charge of the system.” TO make a long story short the came back in 6 months and we received 0 N/C’s, and very few observations. That’s when I found I what I enjoy even more than auditing is running a quality system. I still do the IA’s for the company, but I also have the responsibility for overseeing every other part of the system. We still have a few disbelievers but they are no longer a stone around our neck as we are swimming in the ocean. I also think this has prepared me for my next step/job with a bigger company. I like what I do and that is running a system not just part of it but all of it. I have even prepared a training class that I am currently trying to get RAB approval for (ISO 13485:200X) which will be a stand-alone document for Medical Device Companies. The company put faith in me and I feel like I came through, they taught me a lot as well as I hope I taught them, so while I enjoy auditing I found out I enjoy taking charge of a system even more.

Yes a bit long winded but thats how I feel about being an auditor.