Auditing Transport Service Companies

Hi All,

First of all i would like to thank admins and members of this forum, I'm new to this forum.

I would like to know about what will be the key focus areas while auditing (Quality / HSE / Envioronmental) a transport / logistic company who support our organization. The transportation company is already working with the organisation and has recent issues in delay in transportation.

Thanks in advance for your support

ibnshaik,

Please state your audit objective.

From this you can determine the extent or scope of the audit and the samples you need to take.

You may for example need to focus on their corrective action to stop recurrence of delay/late collection or delivery to fulfill the audit objective.

Or you may need to broaden your audit to focus on vehicle maintenance to prevent breakdowns and to prevent pollution.

Perhaps they do not have enough drivers, in which case you may investigate the effectiveness of their recruiting process.

Your audit objective should be provided by the audit client. Consult with the parts of your organization affected by the performance of the logistics and transportation service to agree upon the audit objective.

Then we may suggest the areas of investigation to fulfill the audit objective.

John

Thanks John,

Our audit objective is to reduce the delay and make the supplier inline with our requirements.

Currently we are gathering information on the delays caused by the transportation company which will be input for them to identify the root cause for the area of weakness.

Regards,

ibnshaik said:

Thanks John,

Our audit objective is to reduce the delay and make the supplier inline with our requirements.

Currently we are gathering information on the delays caused by the transportation company which will be input for them to identify the root cause for the area of weakness.

Regards,

Click to expand...

Audit will not reduce delays. Audit may find reasons, but if the auditor is not experienced in the industry, then this is less likely.

Why not simply sit down with the supplier and work with them to identify, through root cause identification, what leads to delays and how to implementation actions to reduce them?

Andy,

I do completely agree with you " Audit will not reduce delay" but the audit will find reasons or casual factors that causes delay.

It is our organisation requirement to perform audit on suppliers on a periodical basis at the same time we will also be having a meeting with the suppliers and discuss the issue.

Thanks once again.

ibnshaik said:

Thanks John,

Our audit objective is to reduce the delay and make the supplier inline with our requirements.

Currently we are gathering information on the delays caused by the transportation company which will be input for them to identify the root cause for the area of weakness.

Regards,

Click to expand...

Ibnshaik,

From your audit client's stated objective it seem they have little or no confidence in the effectiveness of the corrective action to determine and remove the causes of delays.

In which case should you be auditing the effectiveness of your corrective action process? Or, you could run a workshop for logistics, transportation and their customers on problem solving such as "Ford Global 8D".

If your audit client remains determined to audit I suggest you wait for the logistics and transportation services and their customers to finish their corrective action.

Then you could audit the effectiveness of:

• Communication of transportation requirements
• Adequacy of transportation planning, risk assessment and resources
• Monitoring of the logistics and transportation processes
• Any other actions to stop recurrence of delated collections/deliveries

Your audit client may be wasting resources by auditing before those who are running logistics and transportation services say they have completed AND verified the effectiveness of their corrective action.

John