How to prepare your company for an audit

K

kmyers

#1
Ok, so my Stage II audit is next month and I have a question for you. Does anyone have some examples that I can present to my companies employees, that would help them feel more secure. Not many people in my company have ever been through an audit before. Please spare me the management buy in and all that. As a company we are preparedand I have full management support. I am just looking for questions that auditors ask so I can prepare everyone so they don't clam up and stare at the auditor like a deer in the headlights, which I saw on my way into work this morning.
I am not meaning to offend anyone, but I know some people like to use the cove as their own soapbox to preach to people how wrong your company is if your not doing it their way.

Thanks,

Kris
 
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GStough

Staff member
Super Moderator
#2
If you want to help the folks who are nervous, try to emphasize to them that if they are asked a question they do not know the answer to or are unsure of, it is ok to say "I don't know, but I can find out and let you know". The auditors are not auditing the people, they are auditing the processes - you might be surprised to find out how many folks do not understand this, and as a result, it causes unnecessary stress in the employees.

I hope these tips help. We used them with our people in our recent re-cert audit and it seemed to help folks to know they can say "I don't know"....

Good luck with your audit! :agree1:

P.S. Be sure to let them know, too, that they should NOT take anything found personally.
 
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B

Bob the QE

#3
I use a pre-audit memo that gives frequently asked questions and we offer suggestions as to how to handle them. This includes the "I do not know but I can find out", "let me ask my supervisor" as well as the most used suggestion that just because the auditor isn't talking doesn't mean they need an explanation and that they may be fishing for more information.;)Being most audits are consistant in nature we can re-use the memo before each audit with minor changes. The great thing for us is we could use simple and common language we use everyday to convey the answers. We did not bog the answer's down with auditor-speak we kept it to floor language and terms. It works well and there is something to be said to have the answer's to exam before you go into the test:notme:
 
K

kmyers

#4
Thanks folks. This was the kind of input I was looking for. I am currently creating a little Powerpoint presentation with questions I know will be asked and how to address them along with some hypotheticals and everyone will recieve a copy of it.
 
T

tsmith7858

#5
I found two presentations in the coves files. One was "How to survive an audit" and the other was "Things to do during an audit".

I would link them for you but I do not know how. You should be able to go the the Post Attachments List to find them.
 
Q

QEC1989

#8
In an even broader sense, you may have a Registrar such as ours....

Particular emphasis on Quality Policy and Quality Objectives.

As it relates to your people, in my opinion, it's not to have everyone memorize the policy verbatim. Rather, as an auditor I would want to see if people understand how their everyday work contributes to validating the policy. Same goes for Quality Objectives. Of course, make sure that the policy and objectives are posted and your folks are aware of the posting location(s).

Another seemingly obvious thing for your people to be aware of (which is amazingly forgotten alot of the time) is....'who is your management representative?"
My auditor loves to ask that one.

Good Luck to ya.
 

howste

Thaumaturge
Super Moderator
#10
Another seemingly obvious thing for your people to be aware of (which is amazingly forgotten alot of the time) is....'who is your management representative?"
My auditor loves to ask that one.
Does everyone need to know who the management representative is? I don't think so. I'd challenge an auditor who tried to write a nonconformity because a production operator didn't know who it was...

(It looks like Sidney beat me to it...)
 
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