chergh said:
The question was really in respect to internal audits, wouldn't allow an external audit to take hard copies, so should have put that in the question.
My company is currently working towards ISO 9001 registration and to help us along a little we got a consultant in to help us work through some of the audits. When he came back from each of his audits he had a pile of paper as objective evidence.
I know that when I am conducting internal audits I may occasionally grab a hard copy of an emailbut 99 times out of a 100 I only have ID's that can be used to locate the evidence I found. Was just curious if many people, like our consultant, took hard copies.
I added the word "internal" to your poll to make your intention clear.
My internal auditors were like "boy scouts" on a hike - take nothing but pictures or notes, leave nothing but footprints.
'
I'd like to echo Randy in that they looked for "good" stuff, too, which might be valuable as part of "improvement."
At every point, the auditors asked,
- "Does the actual activity follow the plan?"
- If yes, they asked personnel, "Do you have any ideas that would make this process work better (more efficiently?)"
- If no, they asked, "Why?" (perhaps the personnel thought there was a better way? some other reason? too complicated? no supplies? not enough time? forgot? etc.)
Auditors only stepped in to stop a process if there was a suspicion of life, health, safety concerns. They were empowered to do this. Otherwise, they went to a department head immediately to report a suspected non-conformance. Department head might make immediate change or refer matter to the Material Review Board for confirmation. At this point, the primary question became whether a nonconforming
process resulted in nonconforming
product. Auditors did not make decisions about whether
product was nonconforming, only whether the
activity was proceeding according to plan as they understood it.
I want to stress auditors did not make a DECISION a process was "nonconforming" - they made a decision that there was a "suspicion." If the suspicion affected life, health, safety, we operated under the premise, "Better safe than sorry."
Interesting poll. I'm eager to see more explanations.