I just completed an external audit of our QMS and our auditor said that ISO suggests one internal auditor to every 10 employees. I've been involved in ISO 9001:2000 for six years and have never seen a guideline from ISO regarding this. Am I missing something? How many Internal Auditors do you all have?
Thanks to you all! I learn everyday from you!
Must have been a joker, huh! This is another one of those
'legend in its own lifetime' aspects of ISO that makes me laugh - at the person who said it!! Any canned number, 10 people, 10%, whatever, is taking an important issue and reducing it to a pure number without consideration of the other equally important facets of planning for audits and auditors.
You have to consider the audit program as a whole, how many audits you're going to need to do, how long they're going to take to perform, the frequency and the kind of personal competencies necessary - just hanging a number of heads on it and saying it works is just
dangerous, IMHO. Sure it's a difficult thing to consider, it takes real creativity to run an effective audit program and you have an opportunity to stop doing the things that don't work - like plucking some numer out of thin air - and demonstrate to your management how to manage the quality system correctly!!
Let's face it, if your boss knew some of this stuff and you went to him/her and said '10%', how would you justify it to them?...............and saying that you heard it from a consultant/auditor isn't going to cut it, especially since you're going to have to justify spending training $$$ on that many people!