Failure to Close Out an Internal Audit Finding

[Alan Greatbatch]

I agree with Jim, planned follow-ups, although I would not leave it 30days. I believe that the longer the NC is left the less likely it is to get closed. I do weekly follow-ups after internal audits until all NCs and CAs are complete. Monthly reports aways copied to the General Manager with length of time that NCs have been open. You can put a metric on length of time to closure of NCs and CAs to monitor improvement of the Quality System. Also I have been known to resort to public humiliation of the offending departmental Manager in front of his superiors, if he is not doing his job then they are not doing theirs. If you do not bring it to their attention then you are not doing yours.

Good luck,

 

[gpainter]

Document what you are doing. I have in one instance issued another CAR to the head of CA for failure to close within a reasonable time. You may want to change your SP to give a time frame for reply and closure. Had this not corrected the problem then a CAR would have went to the ISO rep. then the President. From what you say you have no management commitment. In narrowing down the root cause, I would issue a CAR to the President. I have heard of an instance where a registrar had found no commitment and suspended the registration,although I have not confirmed this. Tell him anyway!!!

 

[Unregistered]

like any process failure it might be worthwhile to investigate why your internal audit corrective action process is failing.

Could it be that you have issued too many trivial findings. You stated 10 findings of a minor nature. If they are minor i.e. are not direct non-compliances to the standard, or not seen to directly contribute to customer complaints then why raise them in the first place.

I would suggest you look at your own auditing technique and process. Audit findings reported for corrective action need to be seen by the actioner as significant. Either they are not or you have failed to get the siginificance across. Minor document corrections should really be undertaken as part of the auditing process, and not reported for corrective action.

Its often a good technique to align your audit findings with what the department sees itself as its most important issue - make them real and concurrent with the objectives of the business.

 

[Raffy]

Originally quoted by gpainter:
".....another CAR to the head of CA for failure to close within a reasonable time."

What does a reasonable time really means? What is the exact time or date a reasonable date I would write on my specs? 7 days? 30 days? 45 days? any comment on this.

I'm still confused in identifying the exact time that I would put on my specs regarding planned follow-ups?

Again, thanks in advance.
Happy New Year to All.

Raffy

 

[tfish]

You should give them at least 2 weeks to come up with a viable corrective action plan. Within the plan, they should be required to state when the plan will be complete.

After that date the CAR can be verified. I don't think another audit is necessary, simply document how you will verify completion and check effectiveness, then do it!

If the culprit has not completed the plan, pass it back to him with a new due date and copy his (and your) boss.

 

[Tom from Clayton]

We usually try to keep it simple. Whenever someone is not responding as soon as they should we "invite" them to our Quality Board meeting and they can describe to the Board (and company) President why they are unable to meet their agreed upon schedule.

We started doing this when we noticed the Presidents staff members were the ones most frequently ignoring their schedules. Obviously this won't work with a larger company but a variation of the theme probably will.


Tom

 

[SteelWoman]

"Invitation"

OHHHHHH, I LIKE that a LOT!! What a great method! Nothing like a little public humiliation to get the job done! Thanks!

By the way, to update this post... the individual involved no longer has his job as mgr of that department!

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Well SteelWoman...

I share your problem and I try to solve it more or less in the same way as you do: Documentation and well.... nagging I guess.

My way of doing the nagging is:

I allow auditees 2 weeks to come up with a deadline and a suggested action.

All our internal audit documentation is assembled in a database application, and when anything passes a deadline without my getting word about any action it's automatically published on our intranet. ( Of course I tell people about looming deadlines and sometimes adjust deadlines acc to agreement - No need to be nasty about it ).

Another thing to consider is to set the audit interval according to results. If I get poor results in an audit or notice that deadlines are not kept, I simply audit that function more often.

Thus, good result in audits and meeting deadlines will keep me off peoples backs. That serves as a bit of a reward to the people who do their stuff right and allows me to concentrate on problem areas.

/Claes

 

[Jamie]

You know this thread has made me realize something I need to do. You guys have talked about follow up audits. The way we used to cover follow up techniques was to simply review all previous findings on a department at each audit. Well, with this said, I have to implement another method. Given, I'm no longer auditing by department, I'm doing it by process. Thanks for the reminder guys!

E Wall what does IMHO stand for? I've seen this used quite a bit throughout this forum and have yet figured it out.

Jamie

 

[D.Scott]

Just my opinion here -

But I have seen it used many ways here at the cove.

1) When it is accompanied by a red face it usually means "I Made Horrible Oversights"

2) After an aruement it could mean "I Might Have Offended"

3) If you have just been audited it might mean "I Must Have Objectives"

4) What I think it really means is "If Men Had Ovaries"

That is all of course In My Humble Opinion as I would never second guess what anyone here says.

Dave