How many audits a year do your internal auditors perform?

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Ok, I'm at it again... (Don't test me for steroids today)...

How many audits do your internal auditors (generally) perform?

/Claes

 

[wkl]

Do you mean total number per auditor or total number of audits by the audit team?

 

[gpainter]

Claes are your going for poster of the year? My auditors do at least 1 audit per month.

 

[Sam]

With QS it was a complete QMS audit two times per year.
With TS2, I will probably schedule monthly process audits and one QMS per year.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

wkl said:

Do you mean total number per auditor or total number of audits by the audit team?

Oops.... I didn't say that? I meant audits per auditor and year.

gpainter said:

Claes are your going for poster of the year? ---X---

Nah... Just feeling a bit creative now that we're past the certification business. Cant beat Energy anyway... Nor Lucinda if she starts using that scuba avitar again...

/Claes

 

[Bill Ryan - 2007]

I had to "vote" with more than 10. Our IAs perform at least two process audits per week ("Control Plan audits"). However, we do employ an outside company to perform "QMS audits" twice per year (would they be considered IAs?).

Bill

 

[howste]

Looking at the results, it seems there are two camps here. One camp that believes in large audits bi-annually or quarterly, and the other that does smaller, monthly audits. My personal preference is the more frequent audits, but I do contract auditing for a couple of companies that call me up every six months. What works for the organization really depends on a lot of variables such as size, structure, management preference, etc.

 

[Karen R]

I'm all for small, frequent process-based audits. I ditched the semi-annual business as one of my first mgmt rep acts and have never regretted it. Our process is divided into deparments (14 total). Each department is audited 1 to 4 times a year (based on relative importance... from 14K), with an average of two departments a month.

I have a few auditors who volunteer regularly and audit several times a year. The others fill in a few times a year. Since adding a requirement to our eval process that looks for participation "over and above the call," they audit more often. We also run a pretty informal audit process - I tell the pool what departments are available during a given month and the first ones to tell me what they want and when get the job. No opening meetings or the like, you show and up and say "Hi, I'm here to audit..."

It really does work well - little audit fear, everyone's always "ready"... the real proof came last year when we were audited by one of our auto suppliers and received a 159 out of 160 possible points.

 

[db]

Looking at the results, it seems there are two camps here. One camp that believes in large audits bi-annually or quarterly, and the other that does smaller, monthly audits.

howste, I find that this might be due to size and complexity of the organization. Most of my clients are quite small, and can easily audit the entire system in a day or less. To them it makes more sense to audit twice a year. One client I had was very large, and had a full-time audit staff. They audited everyday, across 3 shifts. They still had a hard time auditing the entire system in a year, not that any auditor would goldbrick or anything.

If, based on your size, complexity and resources available, you might want to try one way. If it doesn't work, change it.

 

[AndyN]

howste, I find that this might be due to size and complexity of the organization. Most of my clients are quite small, and can easily audit the entire system in a day or less. To them it makes more sense to audit twice a year. One client I had was very large, and had a full-time audit staff. They audited everyday, across 3 shifts. They still had a hard time auditing the entire system in a year, not that any auditor would goldbrick or anything.

If, based on your size, complexity and resources available, you might want to try one way. If it doesn't work, change it.

For the life of me I can't see how doing two audits a year is meeting the requirements of a) the standard and b) the business!