Internal Audit Concerns including Escalation of Non-Conformances

[chaosweary]

Our company is having our group perform an internal audit whenever anything appears to be wrong with a process instead of managers initiating process improvement projects on their own. My concern is two fold. First is this what the internal audit group should be doing? Secondly if I write up a non conformance to a process and the area manager states that the problem is company wide, is it my job to then find more examples by going out of scope of the audit to write it to upper management or should the manager of the area that the non-conformance is written to be responsibile for escalating the NC for corrective action up the management chain?

Thanks!

[AndyN]

In Reply to Parent Post by chaosweary

Our company is having our group perform an internal audit whenever anything appears to be wrong with a process instead of managers initiating process improvement projects on their own. My concern is two fold. First is this what the internal audit group should be doing? Secondly if I write up a non conformance to a process and the area manager states that the problem is company wide, is it my job to then find more examples by going out of scope of the audit to write it to upper management or should the manager of the area that the non-conformance is written to be responsible for escalating the NC for corrective action up the management chain?

Thanks!

Question # 1 - Not at all! The system is there for management to control changes, not use audits to inspect the system, like we did with product and QC folks.

Question # 2 - I wouldn't go any route involving audit findings. Bring it up at Management Review, instead. You could call it 'Quality Planning'

[DsqrdDGD909]

Newbie take:
I thought audits were designed to find evidence of conformance not evidence of nonconformance. (not sure I'm stating that correctly). If there's something wrong with a process, I think a corrective action may be more appropriate.

[Stijloor]

In Reply to Parent Post by chaosweary

Our company is having our group perform an internal audit whenever anything appears to be wrong with a process instead of managers initiating process improvement projects on their own. My concern is two fold. First is this what the internal audit group should be doing? Secondly if I write up a non conformance to a process and the area manager states that the problem is company wide, is it my job to then find more examples by going out of scope of the audit to write it to upper management or should the manager of the area that the non-conformance is written to be responsibile for escalating the NC for corrective action up the management chain?

Thanks!

Hello chaosweary,

It seems to me that the managers are abdicating their leadership responsibility and are passing the buck to the auditors. That's audit program abuse. I agree with AndyN, that's not what the audit program is for. Using the auditors as "Quality Cops" does not contribute to a positive view of the program.

If you as an auditor write a nonconformity report based on objective audit evidence, then the responsible manager is supposed to take action "without undue delay" rather than giving you the runaround. It is OK to clarify and help the manager understand, but it is not your job to find causes, or listen to "company-wide" problem excuses. The responsible manager must take it from there- escalate or whatever.....

Wishing you lots of strength without frustration.

Stijloor.

[chaosweary]

Thanks for the insight, what is happening is that we are being sent out to find evidence of non-conformity after my manager has discussions (anecdotal) with managers in other departments. If we don't find anything then our audit skills are criticized...and we get "did you look at...and look at....and look at...". Then trying to handle this kind of grilling calmly and professionally i.e., being a team player.
Escalation of audit findings are still an issue, only the quality manager (my boss) and the VP of Mfg hold quality reviews of the QMS we are not invited to attend. I must now come up with some strategy to keep myself and my fellow auditors out of this witch hunt scenario. I also need to think about how to deal with mid-level managers that want me to escalate issues up while still maintaining good rapport with them (again not pissing them off by just saying no I won't do that). A main contributor to this problem is that our "independent" audit group reports into MFG.
I mean I can't fault the managers, they want more "value add" out the internal quality system audits. I give them audit report to QMS compliance and suggestions for improvement but now they want me to go back and aggregate them historically and show them the biggest hitters over time (I thought this was the quality managers job). Oh well I keep trying...

[potdar]

Not an unusual situation that you are finding yourself in. It used to (still does) happen to the quality / HR / IE .. in general all the service or 'cost centre' guys. They end up being ping pong balls or shoulders to fire from for both the management and the profit centre guys. Whatever issues the management and profit centres dont want to tell each other directly, they will try to communicate through the cost centres... Part of the job

The solution is to make the management and the auditees confront each other and make them talk directly to each other. As an internal auditor you absolutely should not proceed on a witch hunt on behalf of the management. Just check whatever they have told you to check. Nor should you escalate the findings if the auditee starts pointing his fingers towards a horizontal audit. Thats not in the scope of your audit.

As an auditor you are very much within your rights to demand a closing meeting. Revise your procedure to insert the provision if necessary. Demand a closing meeting rather than submitting a paper report. Report your findings verbally. Let the auditee and the management state their view to each other face to face and then happily submit your report including a record of the closing meeting.

[curryassassin]

Sometimes, an internal audit can be requested by a process owner/dept head if they have made reasonable attempts to isolate the cause or if they are 'concerned' about a process.

In this scenario, instead of sampling during the audit, the internal auditor examines/observes/questions all aspects of the process in an attempt to highlight the root cause(s). I have used this technique previously, when working for a very small org. I used an Ishikawa (fault tree) diagram to pinpoint likely candidates and was able to ID 2 causes, which resulted in effective CAPA.