Internal Auditing Hours

[Jim Biz]

Does anyone have information on a "normal or average & Rnge" amount of internal hours it can/should take to effectivley audit a 9002 system on a per year basis? --

I realize there are many variables and a wide range of hours can be expected but we are in our second year of registration and have not yet recorded enough information on actual "time to accomplish" inputs to be of much use in planning.

[Laura M]

Jim,
I think the only answer is the one you already gave....it depends. The complexity of the work, the number of employees.
You may want to look at the QS9000 "man-days" table. Assuming a big company with many departments, you may develop your own schedule based on the size of the departments. I was in a situation where we had approx 40 manufacturing areas with 10-250 people per area. The small departments had 1/2-1 day audits and large departments could have had a 3 day audit, including off shifts. Add into that support departments or cover along the way if the trail leads you there, but approximately another day per each of support areas. (maintenance, personnel(training), etc.
Remember to keep the internal auditors on a schedule/timeline during the audit. Unless they are "on to something big" they should stick to the scheduled and not allow themselves to get off schedule.

Jim,
My experience is with a plant of between a thousand and fifteen hundred people. I covered that comfortably with teams of relatively inexperienced auditors - 5 auditors per team, 4 times per year. Sometimes I joined in myself. I expected 4 hours actual time on the floor, from each auditor - I wanted them to complete the whole thing, report and all, in less that one day, to limit impact on their usual jobs.
So that makes a total of 4x5x4 hours = 80 hours. Say 100 for comfort and double it to include the report and add a bit more to cover time spent arranging with the guide and attending closing meetings and reviews.

So that's about it but, in fact, it was never the number of auditing hours I thought the job needed that dictated the time spent. The greater limitations were; 1) How much auditing the system could take before it became too much of a drag on the time and the patience of the auditees. 2) How many audits and auditors could I comfortably manage. I found that one a quarter was enough and to try to get teams together of more than about 5 did not provide returns for the effort involved. In fact (and Marc will agree with this, I've no doubt) I always said that it would have been easier and quicker for me to do the whole job myself, and the results would have been much better as well. This loses out on the gains made as auditors learn more about their own organisation but whether this is often an appreciated and used spin-off is doubtful.

Having said all that, though. The fact is that any reasonable amount of time and any old audit is probably good enough. The quality of the response is far and away more important than the quality of the audit.
rgds, John C

[Jim Biz]

Thanks folks

I've started a plan per system document using:
1 hr prep time
1 hr actual question time
1 hr final report & closing time

At least I have a guide to follow --- we have but 130-150 people at any given time so surley this will be a decent first baseline.

Regards
Jim