Andy,
40 minutes is too long. 20 minutes maximum. only high risks areas. The Tier 1 should review their LPA process and determine what can be improved. The LPA checklist might have grown over time and should be checked against the company current risks.
LPAs should be done daily and less frequently by others higher in the organization. (thanks to Stijloor) LPAs can be partially seen as MBWA in a structured, with follow-up and documented way. LPAs (when done right) gets management out on the floor, away from the email, blackberries, phone conferences and meetings.
In general internal audit are not done daily and same areas are not repeated for quite some time. Internal audits takes longer than LPA do.
Kees.
PS. Maybe we should continue this discussion in dutch.
Kees,
You're correct, internal audits are done less frequently, take longer, not repeated in some areas etc. etc. That's no reason to be doing LPAs to make up for inadequacies of the internal audit program. All the good thing you describe for LPAs are equally valid for a good internal audit. Why shouldn't Manufacturing Management be behind internal quality systems audits? If they were done to benefit the organization instead of being forced on them, using ISO as the stick and so on. An effective internal audit program would involve management, get them on the shop floor, be done frequently in areas which have issues, take a (relatively) short time, but as I've endeavored to point out in (many) other posts, internal audits are based on third party techniques. So let's go and fix what's not working first.
Indeed, one of the new dangers encountered with a program of LPAs running along side of internal audits is that when the quality auditors raise issues on the manufacturing line, often the response from management is 'We did an LPA and we didn't find anything wrong.......!"
Kees, we're not going to agree on this one, I'm sorry. Time will tell, I suppose......