Internal Audit Frequency Schedule: Monthly, Quarterly, or Bi-Annually?

[GStough]

Hi everyone,

Just curious about how other organizations schedule their internal audits. Do you work on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual schedule for your internal audits?

One of our facilities does their internal audits bi-annually, or every 6 months. The corporate facility (my location) does theirs quarterly at the present time, but originally started with a monthly schedule. We (corporate) do audits all year long (we have about 15 or so processes to audit through the year), but one facility only audits their processes once per year (they do half of them at one time of year and the other half at another time of year).

I'd like to know how others manage theirs. Would anyone like to share?

[Crusader]

We have an audit every month except: March, April, September, and October. These are the months prior to a registrar audit - I need 2 months to prepare before each registrar audit. We cover everything in 8 months time and start over again in January every year.

[RCBeyette]

When I was based at a site - no auditing in Corporate...we're a do-as-we-say kind of organization - we did annual audits. A integrated, system audit to the requirements of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. It allowed us to gain an overall assessment as to the health of the Management System instead of individual components.

[SteelMaiden]

Our schedule is set up to perform all audits annually, but I try to keep something going on monthly. Our audit schedule breaks down to around 13 processes/subprocesses. What we usually end up with is a rash of audits being done in the spring and then a big sweep in Oct./Nov. to complete. Not necessarily optimum, but then again working around everyone's schedule is always easy.

[ScottK]

My current schedule is:
The first Thursday of every month is a "Department" audit where we audit the processes owned by department managers, except for August and September which are off (audit team of 2 auditors + 1 Lead auditor)

Full system audit to the ISO standard is in mid-April (whole audit team)

PED audit concentrating on material traceability for CE marked parts in Mid March. (2 auditors + Lead)

[lrowe]

We also do a few audits every month except January and December. The main reason is to break the QMS into smaller chunks so that the individual audits don't take up too much time. It was a bit of a cell job to convince management to do our own audits because they were concerned about taking people away from their "Real" work. Previously audits were contracted out. Then there were only 2 internal audits per year, and they were strictly against the ISO standard and not specific to the business.

I'm a big fan of having your own audit team to do your internal audits. I expect us to reap a number of benefits over the contracted audits.

Larry

[Helmut Jilling]

In Reply to Parent Post by GStough

Hi everyone,

Just curious about how other organizations schedule their internal audits. Do you work on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual schedule for your internal audits?

One of our facilities does their internal audits bi-annually, or every 6 months. The corporate facility (my location) does theirs quarterly at the present time, but originally started with a monthly schedule. We (corporate) do audits all year long (we have about 15 or so processes to audit through the year), but one facility only audits their processes once per year (they do half of them at one time of year and the other half at another time of year).

I'd like to know how others manage theirs. Would anyone like to share?

Most of my clients have a schedule that spreads across a full year. Some take a few months off (ie: July and Dec.). Allow for adding a few extra audits here and there when there are problem areas. I like this format the most as well.

[Ajit Basrur]

Good question Gidget

In one of my previous employments, we had drawn a very good layered audit structure -

1. Each department do internal weekly 5S audit (each employee takes turn)
2. The Department Supervisor do monthly compliance audit regards to procedures.
3. The Department Manager carries quarterly detailed audit.
4. Internal audits by Central auditing team for entire organization based on the schedule (usually annually)
4. Yearly Corporate audit

For (1), its a quick affair lasting not more than 2 hours.
(2) could take about 6 hours
(3) could take about 1.5 days
(4) one day for that department
(5) one day for that department

We used to plan the central auditing teams' audit and Corporate audit to be spaced well so that the effectivity of the audits can be maintained.