Does anyone conduct opening & closing meetings for their internal audits?

J

Joe Cruse

#11
We are a small company (<200), and our management team meets 1-3 times/week, per the owner. I usually schedule and let the department manager know at these meetings that I want to audit his area. I also email a few days out from the audit. We sit down with the manager (or designated rep) of that area and briefly chat about the audit, and then go out and run through their area. We'll come back to them and speak about their area of the QMS as well. After it's over, we'll briefly speak again and tell them it's done. If a nonconformance is found, we'll tell them about it, and then fill out a CAR notification and forward it to them, for the system. We get into the CA in the regular meetings, and then cover it in our regular MR as well. For the audit, we use a form I developed with a lot of input from the great folks here, and it is in this section somewhere.
 
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Antonio Vieira

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#12
Some of the audits I make are internal. At small companies they hire an external guy to make internal audits. In those situations I have to make those meetings.
Other situation is for a very large organization, and if the audit team belongs to a different plant, it’s a good idea to make the opening a closing meeting. This is also a good idea, because it is a good training tool for both auditors and auditees.:)
 
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Coury Ferguson

Moderator here to help
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Super Moderator
#13
AndyN said:
Does anyone conduct opening & closing meetings for their internal audits?

If so, what format do the meetings take? Who attends the meetings? Tell me what you've been doing?:yes:

Andy

I would always have an opening and closing meeting for the internal audits.

It is only fair that the responsible Manager/Supervisor are aware of what is scheduled to be audited and your scope (opening) and only fair to let them know if any deficiencies were noted (closing). That would give them the opportunity to provide documentations that was not available or discuss the objective evidence found during the audit.

The format is informal, the responsible manager/supervisor who's area/process is under review are in attendance.
 
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V

Varadarajan

#14
Does anyone conduct opening & closing meetings for their internal audits?

If so, what format do the meetings take? Who attends the meetings? Tell me what you've been doing?:yes:

Andy
We are a small Design services company with strength of 80 persons.
We do design services for Plant,Civil,Structural,Electrical,Mech,Aero,etc. We work with ACAD,SOLID WORKS,CATIA,ANSYS etc.


No opening meeting-
Agenda,Time,place,auditors,Auditees,Process,etc.are all given inthe audit circular - by e-mail(by MR) to all concerned

The audit cycle is already known to every Trained inetrnal auditors and respective process owners.

Reference audit checklists for all the process like Top management,MR,Design,Marketing,purchase,Training,QA,System admin/Maintainence,etc are given in advance to all the auditors by MR.


Closing meeting(about 1 hour) is done at the end when all the audits are conducted to see if the QMS is followed for effectiveness.

Information regarding previous NC's are also given.

All the NC's and any suggestions for improvements are recorded in the respective audit reports by the concerned auditors.
The same are read by the respective auditors with agreed time to close the NC's.

Frankly speaking we have people with good attitude to follow the system.
Advantage- most of them are well qualified(Graduate Engineer's ,B.tech,M.tech)

CEO/MD also attends the meeting:)
 
M

MDQSA

#16
We're a small company (less than 25 employees) so we don't conduct an opening meeting. Everyone gets the e-mail and it generally gets discussed in a staff meeting prior to the audit.
However, we do conduct formal closing meetings. These always include the CEO, Director(s) of the area(s) being audited, anyone we interviewed, as well as all the audit team (obviously). And seeing as we're a small company, we do open it up to anyone else who wants to know.
 
D

David J Quality

#17
Does anyone conduct opening & closing meetings for their internal audits?

If so, what format do the meetings take? Who attends the meetings? Tell me what you've been doing?:yes:

Andy
There are no opening meetings internally but I do encourage my auditors to make an interview list and contact these individuals in advance out of respect for their work and to illustrate that this is an important task that deserves to have time set aside. After the audit is complete the auditor is to "report out" to the process owner with the results of the audit including their signature on any nonconformances found. :D
 
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J

JaneB

#18
I often do internal audits for clients, and/or accompany/coach client personnel when they are doing internal audits.

I only rarely do formal opening meetings, because they are almost always overkill. But I/we do make sure that the purpose of an opening meeting is achieved (eg, ensure people understand what's going on, prior agreement of date, communication of why/who, etc etc).

Closing meetings? There's always some kind of closure and wrap-up, but whether it's a formal meeting or not depends on the context and how many people. Sometimes it's a a quick 'catch-up' on the run, sometimes it is a meeting. Usually just the manager of the area, their 2IC if any, the QM, but I've also had meetings with the entire executive team by their request.

Again, it's important to make sure that certain things are achieved: to give some feedback to the manager/s, get agreement on any actions to be raised, ensure that people either accept the findings (even if they don't like 'em) or can provide extra evidence to consider, etc.

Often, all parties are usually just learning about audit, so I/we aim to give them the experience of being audited, learn what's involved (de-stress) and opportunity to ask questions.
 

Raffy

Quite Involved in Discussions
#19
Hi Andy,
We don't have the formal Opening Meeting. What we do is the Internal Auditor shall send the Audit Notice via email to notify the Auditee and the Manager 5 working days prior to planned audit date. (Notification is not necessary for verification and random audit purposes). Notification must be acknowledged by the Auditee within 5 working days upon receipt. If there is no acknowledgement by auditee the schedule of audit is presumed confirmed. However, the auditee is allowed to postpone the schedule audit date provided the same shall be re-scheduled within the same month or the immediately following month.
For closing meeting, the auditor just summarize the findings without really explaining that this a potential nonconformance, later after you received the report you will be shocked that the said finding is a Minor Nonconformance.

IMHO, How about starting a poll for this thread?
Though this is our process, I just hope that our internal auditor will also follow the requirements of ISO19011 as discussed by Randy..:agree1:
Raffy
 
#20
Hi,

I believe that a formal opening meeting and a formal closing meeting definitely help to bring home the seriousness of internal audits. If audits are carried out as per ISO-19011 and employees, especially those audited, know that the audit is being carried out in a structured way, the response to the audit is different from the response one gets if the audit is not structured or not conducted as per a standard. Having observed internal audits carried out in factories and offices and having conducted internal audits as lead auditor I can say that following a standard like ISO-19011 for internal audits helps to improve the effectiveness of internal audits. One related issue is the competence of internal auditors; if, again, ISO-19011 criteria are used, the effectiveness is better.

With kind regards,

Ram
 
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