Does Your Organization Really Benefit from Internal Audits? Time for a Change?

[sathis]

In Reply to Parent Post by Jupitor

1. Internal audits are done merely to satisfy the requirements of ISO 9001 (or other standards) not necessarily to verify to what extent QMS (or EMS) is being complied.

Apart from Audting Standard requirement, you can add Best and Bad practices seen across the Processes.

Will definitly add value to the Audit

sathis

[charanjit singh]

Thanks Sathis. This is a good idea.

Jupitor:
agree:

[Helmut Jilling]

In Reply to Parent Post by confused1

In an effort to add value to internal auditing ( I have been doing compliance auditing for a while and feel it is of limited value as it's a go-no-go guage) I have wondered if perhaps I should take a risk management approach.

I work in a distribution center for replacement parts (all we do is purchase, recieve, pack, stock, pick and ship).

I kinda wonder if risk management would be like using a sledge hammer on the head of a pin. -also have to wonder about management's perception.

All management wants is to get the $$$ out the door.

So we get a lot of returns - mabey that would be a good place to start.

Thoughts/ comments, please.

confused1

If a distribution center is getting a lot of complaints and returns, there truly is a problem.

Value-added or Improvement Auditing is a much better approach to internal audits, but might be difficult if management is hostile toward the program. If not hostile, it might work.

(I do a training program on Auditing for Improvement which has had very good results, if you are interested.)

[bc5219]

Absolutely, our internal audits continue to find the gaps in our systems (mostly document control and follow-through), but we have gotten some of the greater benefites from use of layered process audits. Those keep attention on items daily and seem to get more management attention.

My concern thought with Layered Audits (feedback from everyone, please), is how to keep them fresh. After awhile when things are "good" they start to become a bit of a pencil whip exercise. The audits should be dynamic and focus on customer issues and high RPNs from the FMEA as well as daily maintenance and 5S items, but as existing problems begin to be resolved and verified, the audits lose their shine and peolple get bored with them.

Any ideas would be appreciated!
Thanks!

[joshua_sx1]

Does An Organization Really Benefit from Internal Audits?

It surely does!!!... as others explained...

Time for a change?

...well, keeping them “fresh” is really one of the toughest task to maintain…actually, this is really the undesirable side of internal audits… everyone gets tired… and everyone seems not getting serious… until it become “for the sake of documentation” rather than “for the sake of improvement”…

…and I’ve seen so many strategies to make them keep them flowing… still the best and the most effective way is when the top management get involve… even the most stubborn and uncooperative manager will have no option or excuse but to comply… no matter how boring it is...

…afterall as they say, no project has become successful without the “true” support from the top management…

(I added the word “true” to denote serious commitment from the top management)

[Raffy]

Absolutely...our organization benefit from Internal Audits...because there are several observations that can be transformed for the additional improvement for our company.
raffy

[goodtimes]

This is all very interesting conversation to me because my boss "Quality Director" is asking me as the lead auditor to make internal audits more interesting to management during our management reviews.

I had a company call me the other day. This company is offering to do our internal audits for us and they ensure me that this will meet the requirements of the standard. They charge a flat fee to audit our company once or twice a year, they perform the audits enough ahead of our registrars audit so that we have time to resolve any issues and they will make observations that will allow our audit teams more time to focus on continuous improvement. This same company is also a registrar. Sound like a scam?

I don't know how many of you have been involved in ISO since your company was first certified but speaking from experience.... internal and external audits have been almost exactly the same from the biginning, why wouldn't the training be the same? We're looking for compliance to the same standard....

[Peter West]

Something definitely up there. The whole presumption that internal audits are only done just prior to External assessment/surveillance would be one of the biggest issues of concern for the company where this is happening. the whole point of the internal audits are for continued monitoring of the systems, identifying issues as they crop up (i.e. as they are identified in as an audit NC).

I would not say that the internal and external audits are the same. I assume i'm right in thinking generally internal audits are subjective and so would be different from company to company so it may not be the case for all, however the external audits we have for 9001 focus on different points from a vastly different perspective in comparison to the internal audits that are mainly project (and occasionally also systems) based.