Our company president has been trained as an internal auditor. Someone asked me the question "how can he audit when he is in charge of all the people in the company?" My reply was that he is auditing the ISO standard and not directly the people. Am I correct? Would we be open to a third party auditors corrective action for having the president audit? Any help would be appreciated!

I'm answering without much contemplation here ("shooting from the hip").

Your post knocked my socks off!! What better way for "management" to have a clue as to what is going on on the floor. The only drawback I can see is that he/she may be "on a mission" occasionally (is he/she a "good" auditor?) but then again any auditor can fall into that once in a while. I think I would laugh at an auditor that had anything negative to say about a president doing internal auditing.

As long as the President is not auditing his own work, there is no reason why he should not be able to audit.

It is quite refreshing to see a President auditing.

It may be an opportunity to see how good his/her employees are working.

Danny

Well, our president does not do audits but our Exec. VP is intimately involved in all of my internal audits. In fact she lends a degree of authority to the whole procedure. Managers really prepare in order to please her. When the audit entails going to the shop floor she puts on her uniform shirt, safety glasses, ear plugs and yes, even her steel toe safety shoes! When the audit summary is presented to the exec. committee she is the presenter!
Quite a refreshing approach. :cool:

Congrats to your company and the support shown by top management. At my old company none of the staff would audit!! :applause:

I think this is a genuine commitment by top management involvement in the quality system. Real refreshing. I best the CARs get attention and answered "without undue delay" too. This persident should be a role model for all companies. :applause:

Our company president has been trained as an internal auditor. Someone asked me the question "how can he audit when he is in charge of all the people in the company?" My reply was that he is auditing the ISO standard and not directly the people. Am I correct? Would we be open to a third party auditors corrective action for having the president audit? Any help would be appreciated!
If a President/ CEO wants to perform an audit, let him/her. An audit is a fact finding exercise. It gets the auditor to the place where actual tasks are performed. Effective MBWA can come close to auditing. And, is it not tedious for someone to question the President's "independence"? The buck has to stop somewhere and the President is not a bad place (of course, the Board would be even better?) ;) Considering what it costs in auditee time, I would far rather the President regularly got out to audit than have a registrar come in. It is far more motivating for the Q Prog et al.

And to that original questioner asking, "how can he...", please, get a life! More to the point of Presidents, "How can he/ she NOT!"

You're right...it's an audit of the system, not the people. People's activities are just a component of the system.

As a 3rd party type auditor I would not only accept this as evidence of committment and involvement, but also something worthy of an observation comment.

You need this guy needs to be asked to write an article about why he does this.

Hooo Rah!

I wish more top managers would audit. My last division had lots of buy in problems until each manager (right up to the top dawg) took an audit class and signed up for 1 year minimum audit committment. We had several ask to stay with the team after their year was up. Boy, what a difference it made to our system. Now, I'm told that management doesn't have time to go take an auditor class, they have other higher level things to do. :nope:

Our company president has been trained as an internal auditor. Someone asked me the question "how can he audit when he is in charge of all the people in the company?" My reply was that he is auditing the ISO standard and not directly the people. Am I correct? Would we be open to a third party auditors corrective action for having the president audit? Any help would be appreciated!

When I was at Newport, I had three VPs and several senior Managers on the IA team for the Corporate HQ. I discovered that we had much more in depth audits that provided information that was very relevant to the business operations. i also discovered that Management Review was taken much more seriously.

Don't worry about the registrar auditor. If you take a CAR for it, contact the registrar's Executives and request a new one that actually understands what he is doing. Then file a complaint with the registrar and their accrediting body.

Hershal

Bravo to any Top Dog who wants to audit! For the reasons already given, I'd say it should be great for the company unless the person is a real jerk.

This reminds me of the presidents audit in Allan J's book, "Management audits".
Wallace.

President Audit-Read in the Books, sounds like a good idea to demonstrate Management Commitment to improve the effectiveness of QMS/BMS.

Some problems I would foresee is
Either the auditee would get too nervous and not answer well.
OR
Auditee would brag their department’s achievement for the whole audit time to impress the president.
Both cases, the objective of the audit will be lost.

President has to put aside the day-to-day business issues before taking up this role. This will be a bit difficult as the auditee (function managers) may cite delivery pressure or cost control reasons for not following certain requirements. President should not yield to this excuses- remember “auditing” hat now.
Advantage is the Corrective actions will get resolved much quicker.

Regards,
Govind.

It is refreshing to see some interest in audits that truly come from the top down approach.
Executive, upper and middle management would do well to have a read of Allan J 's Management Audit publication, ISBN 0 9511739-0-1.
It's clear that the ISO 9004/1 benchmark and standard respectively, have missed or either failed to infuse a true and sincere top down approach. I make no secret of my personal use of the task element approach to all types of audits, it has served me well and continues to do so. So much so that, many of my colleagues have a adopted and adapted the task element approach within their respective fields of expertise.
Feel free to view the task element overview at http://elsmar.com//Forums/showthread.php?t=7678
Wallace.

President Audit-Read in the Books, sounds like a good idea to demonstrate Management Commitment to improve the effectiveness of QMS/BMS.

Some problems I would foresee is
Either the auditee would get too nervous and not answer well.
OR
Auditee would brag their department’s achievement for the whole audit time to impress the president.
Both cases, the objective of the audit will be lost.

President has to put aside the day-to-day business issues before taking up this role. This will be a bit difficult as the auditee (function managers) may cite delivery pressure or cost control reasons for not following certain requirements. President should not yield to this excuses- remember “auditing” hat now.
Advantage is the Corrective actions will get resolved much quicker.

Regards,
Govind.

Govind,

I can understand you concerns and they do seem very reasonable at first sight. However, auditee nervousness would depend on the culture within the firm. If it is a company that has a punitive, "shoot the messenger" and negativeculture, that does emanate from the top )an old German saying translates roughly as "a fish rots from the head".) If that is the case, the reacvtion is only what the CEO has inculcated through its own poor example.

I have always sterssed as one of my "12 golden rules" that an audit is about "fact finding, not fault finding". When that approach is adopted, fear does not exist. And, as another of the famous 12 rules, "Always help the auditee." If the company has had its auditors properly trained (which excludes tha vast majority of present day course around) and has implemented such rules, the process owners will understand what an audit is all about and if that CEO/President has attended the same training (something that has occurred on my own courses since the mid-1970s) they will know what are the norms and conduct. (All delegates on my course have to pass an "optional" exam before I will certify them . This involves a test that is NOT of the pathetic multiple choice type but which examines how would the delegate actually undertake an audit. There has been several occasions on which I have failed top managers - and CEOs etc- forcing them to take the exam again after attenbding a refresher course.) So, with proper training that fear is removed.

As to being able to play "braggard's rights" during an audit, that will only happen if the auditor does not know how to audit, how to control the proceeding and how to manage time. All matters I have written about, elsewhere.

So, on balance, Govind, in a healthy company your concerns should be allayed. In an unhealthy company, I doubt if the President/ CEO would be sufficiently interested in being properly trained or even doing audits.

Whether or not CAs will get solved faster - is a matter for conjecture, depending on what is the nature of the CA.

Our company president has been trained as an internal auditor.
WOW! That is an excellent way of demonstrating top management commitment to the quality management system! That person knows -- and demonstrates - that a LEADER has to LEAD from the FRONT. :applause: :applause: :applause: The operative phrase is "Follow me!", not "You go do it and I'll be along later".

(The only similar case I know of from my experience is a top manager who demonstrated that quality was important to him by teaching many of the classes that everyone else had to take. Again, you really believe it when the top boss is teaching it!)

The only problem I can see with the company president doing internal audits is that it happens far too rarely. That is strange, especially since Deming taught that decisions have to be based on fact instead of opinion. It seems the typical corporate executive gets only opinions, all of which have been heavily filtered by lower levels. Going out to audit the system is a great way to get some facts.

In my opinion, any auditor who questions the company president or other executive doing internal audits should be sent back for rework and recalibration.



Graeme

What a concept...:D in the past, most of our department managers have been through formal internal auditor training, but when push came to shove, they did not wish to participate in an audit (too busy, no matter when you were willing to do the audit).

These days, our Site Manager has made it perfectly clear that he expects every member of our Leadership Team (basically all of the Department Managers) to participate in at least one of our Internal Audits this year :whip:. As long as the Auditors are not auditing their own processes / work, no problem. Our site manager has even asked to be on two of our Audit teams :agree1:
("set an example for the other's to follow" :drunk: "brilliant!").

These days, our Site Manager has made it perfectly clear that he expects every member of our Leadership Team (basically all of the Department Managers) to participate in at least one of our Internal Audits this year :whip:. Good call. Hmmm. Would it be a good bet to predict a stampede at the end of the year? :rolleyes:

/Claes

Good call. Hmmm. Would it be a good bet to predict a stampede at the end of the year? :rolleyes:

/Claes
Not quite a stampede... so far, we have staggered their scheduled audits so that there will be at least one per month that includes a member of our leadership team :thedeal: ; 3 out of our 10 Leadership Team members have participated thusfar. Another 3 are scheduled this month, 2 next month and so on.

Eric