Internal Audit of the Training System - Corrective Action Necessary?

[NoSleep]

When you believed that your training system is lacking in content, I am sure you realized and believed it before being in the middle of an internal audit system. So when you begin to dig deeper into what you believed in an internal audit, you are more into fault finding, which is not the spirit and purpose of the internal audit process.
So when you complete your internal audit objectively and look for both positives and improvement areas, address your good intentions directly as a continual improvement process of the training system. During your next internal audit, get the training process audited by someone else to check on how effective your steps taken have yielded results.

Actually it was NOT my intent to find fault but rather to see if there was something lacking and if there was a specific process within the factory that was being missed repeatedly. I did find positives and noted them within the audit as well.

 

[Mikishots]

Re: Corrective Action Necessary? OR what is the best approach??

We do write up each non conformance individually and address them individually my question was more in regard to a number of NCR's that were written up for the same basic non conformance indicating a gap within our training system. So does that gap in the training get it's own Corrective Action or just a suggestion for continual improvement

Sorry, this was not clear in your OP.

Continual Improvement is expected irrespective of issues you're having. This falls squarely in the lap of corrective action - you've identified multiple nonconformances for the same thing, and have stated that the root cause is the training process. It can't really be anything else.

 

[NoSleep]

Re: Corrective Action Necessary? OR what is the best approach??

Sorry, this was not clear in your OP.

Continual Improvement is expected irrespective of issues you're having. This falls squarely in the lap of corrective action - you've identified multiple nonconformances for the same thing, and have stated that the root cause is the training process. It can't really be anything else.

I guess my confusion is with the fact that we do what we say we are going to do within our personnel training so my thought was that means we are conforming to what we say we will do. HOWEVER what we say we will do is obviously not thorough enough.

 

[kgott]

I am in the middle of an internal audit of the training system. The training system is fairly basic; we outline in our SOP's what we are going to do for training and we do it. HOWEVER I have decided to take this audit in a deeper direction and cross reference internal (not customer reported) NCR's to a possible gap within the training system. I do believe I have found that our training system is lacking in content and while we do what we say we will do I don't think what we do is extensive enough. So does this fall into a Corrective Action Report area or does it fall under something else?

Thanks in advance

I would suggest that it falls under an 'improvement' or a 'preventative action' to prevent NCs in the future, its not the kind of thing to stress over. Just don't let an external auditor brow beat you into thinking that which ever view you take is wrong and their classification or 'suggestion' is right.

 

[NoSleep]

I would suggest that it falls under an 'improvement' or a 'preventative action' to prevent NCs in the future, its not the kind of thing to stress over. Just don't let an external auditor brow beat you into thinking that which ever view you take is wrong and their classification or 'suggestion' is right.

Thank you very much! I was thinking improvement or preventative also but was being told to go with corrective which just felt wrong. I appreciate your input

 

[Paola4122]

It falls under :Finding and then according with your procedure you can categorize this a a major or minor nonconformity and start from there to follow your corrective action procedure (8D form for CAR are the best)

 

[JulieChisholm]

I agree with the notion that you have what appears to be an "Opportunity for Improvement" more than an opportunity to write yet another CAR. However, you should handle it in a manner consistent with your company's policy.

And just to throw this out there ...
If you have multiple CARs which point to "training" as the root cause and/or Corrective Action of Nonconformances, you may also have an "Opportunity for Improvement" in your CAPA process.

Something to consider ...

I concur on the "if you have multiple CARs which point to training ...", it's generally not a trainining issue, and the CAPA system isn't identifying the TRUE root cause. You need to assess whether it's really lack of training or a hole in the system. It's so easy to have a CAR of "operators were re-trained" because operators come and go, and you have to have robust systems to keep the problem from occuring in the first place.