Is a complete Internal Audit prior to registration a direct requirement of QS9000?

[RMontvile]

Is a complete Internal Audit prior to registration a direct requirement of QS9000, an indirect requirement, or subject to registrar whim? I ask because a cleint Management Rep. insists that it wasn't required when his parent company was registered in Germany.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Leslie Garon]

No it is not a direct requirement, but you must show that your are verifying your quality system effectivness and this is the tool to do it internally.
There are great benefits to doing internal audits as well as prior to registration:
1. They provide evidence that you are reviewing your quality system effectivness.
2. They provide issues for corrective and preventive action as well as improvement opportunities. You must be able to demonstrate that these systems are in place and working properly at the requistration audit. This is the tool.
3. They provide an opportunity to show Associates what the registration audit will be like.
4. They provide practice for both the department management and the associates in how to answer questions and what kind of questions will be asked during the audit.
5. With frequent internal audits, they allow the requistration and subsequent followup audit(s) to be a comfortable event instead of a fearful one. Gets rid of nervousness<sp>.
6. Most importantly, they will hopefully bring out noncompliance areas prior to your registration audit.

A final recommendation is to ask your registrar to perform a pre-assessment<sp> audit about 2 months prior to your registration audit date. This will help catch the large nonconbformities prior to the real thing and give you a chance to fix areas you may be unaware that need fixing.

NOTE: You should have 3-6 months of evidence that your quality system works in a complient manner prior to requistration audit.

 

[Marc]

LRQA is one registrar which does require a complete round of internal audits prior to the registration audit. They also expect some of them to have been addressed and closed out.

As far as I know it is not written in QS the point is registrars obviously have different requirements. I highly recommend that you ask your registrar what they require.

This goes along with each registrar having different requirements on how long prior to registration audit they expect the systems to operate. LRQA asks for 3 months minimum. So - if you dream up a new corrective action system, you need 3 months of evidence to show the system does work. What this means is that they want all level 2's up and running well before the registration audit.

With that said, I agree with Leslie. With a client I typically want to get the internal audit system up and running as soon as possible. I try to get 2 complete cycles of audits done prior to registration audit. The first cycle gets the internal auditors started. The second round is 'serious', if you will.

Answer to question: ---> Registrar whim...

 

[barb butrym]

would't you want to see if the system works...and is effective as part of the prep..i wouldn't call in teh registrar until I had a full round of audits done....