As I see it Layered Process Auditing forces all levels of management to participate in structured monitoring of their organization’s processes thereby demonstrating their commitment to requirements while seeing and learning what improvements are needed.
Both are expected to be competently completed but LPA is unlike internal auditing in many ways, which may include:
1. Auditors are independent enough to be impartial and objective;
2. Audit program is driven by top management objectives;
3. Auditor plans each audit to fulfill its objective;
4. Auditor samples interactions, inputs, controls and outputs sufficient to fulfill the audit objective;
5. Auditors engage employees in seeking evidence of conformity (including effectiveness);
6. Auditors seek evidence of conformity to a system standard;
7. Auditors record findings in terms of requirements, evidence and nature of excellence/nonconformity;
8. Auditors report the audit results supporting their conclusion which answers each audit’s objective;
9. Auditors report the results to top manager within scope of each audit; and
10. Auditors also examine evidence of the effective verification of corrective actions.
In short, it’s process monitoring versus process auditing (and system auditing).
