Internal Auditing - Daily Audits and Checks Documentation

[TracyShirley]

Hello! I am not sure what I am looking for and I am hoping you guys would be able to assist me. I am pretty much the acting quality manager for my site and one of the things I do is internal auditing. My management team has brought to me the request of a way to document what I would consider system or process audits. Basically if they go out to the plant and check for example, to see if all of a particular inspection sheet is in its appropriate place and completed ones are properly filled out, they want a way of documenting this...
Before I got here, NO internal auditing was done, and now they think everything has to be an audit... and want to document everything "for credit." So my question is, what is the best way of doing this or does anyone else do something similar? They do not want an "entire audit" because they feel that they will not complete ALL of it...
I really hope someone understands this, because I am lost!
Thank you so much!

 

[AndyN]

Re: Daily Audits/Checks Documentation

Hello! I am not sure what I am looking for and I am hoping you guys would be able to assist me. I am pretty much the acting quality manager for my site and one of the things I do is internal auditing. My management team has brought to me the request of a way to document what I would consider system or process audits. Basically if they go out to the plant and check for example, to see if all of a particular inspection sheet is in its appropriate place and completed ones are properly filled out, they want a way of documenting this...
Before I got here, NO internal auditing was done, and now they think everything has to be an audit... and want to document everything "for credit." So my question is, what is the best way of doing this or does anyone else do something similar? They do not want an "entire audit" because they feel that they will not complete ALL of it...
I really hope someone understands this, because I am lost!
Thank you so much!

Hello Tracy and welcome to the Cove!

Since it sounds like management want to get involved with doing audits, one thing you could offer them is to do what are called 'Layered Process Audits'. They are very specific to the actual work being done, documentation etc. and may be just what your management are looking for. Not really in place of internal audits, but a good way to engage your managers etc into the audit process. You can find out more here

 

[TracyShirley]

Re: Daily Audits/Checks Documentation

Thank you Andy! I will definitely check that out. Basically before I got here, the document control was a mess and aside from Risk Assessments, there were not any types of audits or anything being done. They are finally starting to buckle down and now they want to make sure EVERYTHING is documented, but not really scheduled or routinely done. Just something "in case" they happen to do it...

 

[qusys]

Re: Daily Audits/Checks Documentation

Thank you Andy! I will definitely check that out. Basically before I got here, the document control was a mess and aside from Risk Assessments, there were not any types of audits or anything being done. They are finally starting to buckle down and now they want to make sure EVERYTHING is documented, but not really scheduled or routinely done. Just something "in case" they happen to do it...

Hi Tracy.
My advice could be to make a sort of gap assessment first. If you said that internal audit were not done since a long time, your QMS could be jeopardized.
As a second step you could perform a system audit and then go for process audits based upon your QMS identified processes and internal audit program based upon criticality.
If you giveus more details, we could suggest more

 

[TracyShirley]

Re: Daily Audits/Checks Documentation

Hi Tracy.
My advice could be to make a sort of gap assessment first. If you said that internal audit were not done since a long time, your QMS could be jeopardized.
As a second step you could perform a system audit and then go for process audits based upon your QMS identified processes and internal audit program based upon criticality.
If you giveus more details, we could suggest more

I have actually started doing audits since I came here. I do an entire "Quality Management System" audit which covers our policies/procedures and its processes. I also do a number of audits/inspections over our prerequisite programs for HACCP. In addition to these, we have corporate audits that have to be done annually to ensure we are complying with corporate quality and safety standards.
The audits they are looking for would be for example, if someone did a quick walkthrough of a particular area and checked to see if everything was in its place, orderly, and if there are any documents such as incoming goods inspection records, those would be checked for accuracy and completion. I wanted to make a checklist over each area, but the management team does not want that just because they do not want a routine or scheduled type of inspection...
My idea was to create just a template for an "Audit Report" that would just ask what was inspected...what was found...etc.
I am new to all of this quality stuff, I was originally brought on just to "organize" their documents until it was discovered that the documents needed to be completely redone and a complete makeover of the quality system was needed.
I do not know much about the system and process audits, but I have been reading about them on this site. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[andrewg]

Hi Tracey,

We had a few issues detected during our Internal Audit process so one of the actions taken was to increase the level of check so that everyone understood the importance of documents being completed.

We did this by introducing a weekly area health check. This was made up from reviewing the internal audit findings and taking the themes that were re-occurring and producing a standard check sheet.

We have seen real results here. To ensure impartiality, we got managers / supervisors from different areas to audit one anothers areas.

Hope this helps.

Andy

 

[Frank Oros]

Re: Daily Audits/Checks Documentation

I think many of the comments here are skirting the same questions: what is the value of the audit to your QMS? Are you auditing to actual procedural or element requirements, or for some other reason?
Layered Process Audits are excellent investigative tools, that motivate management and supervisory personnel (who would often know very little about the processes they're responsible for,) to become very aware of the processes, at the operators' level. I've seen major operational changes occur (most for the better,) as a direct result of LPAs.
Internal audits that are mandated by your QMS requirements, may or may not result in identification of gaps/failure modes not previously realized, but will generally provide you with a 'barometer' for the operation being audited.
Your initial concern about 'weighting' the results of unscheduled audits is well-founded. Often, the seeming 'discoveries' from such audits are blown out of proportion, due to the pre-disposition of the person(s) initiating the audit to firmly believe that they WILL find a major failure mode of some sort. That said, development and application of a process-specific audit should not be so narrow in scope that it misses ancillary or contributing processes when conducted.
Your registrar will look for most of these specific items when assessing your QMS:
*Is your audit plan in place? (whether QMS or LPA aligned)
*Is it effective in terms of recognizing inconsistencies?
*Does your organization act on the audit findings, by developing procedural and/or mistake-proof processes.
*Does your organization use audits effectively as a continual improvement tool?