Our decisions for product audits came from the AIAG definition as follows:
"The intent of the product audit is verification that the control plan controls in different stages of production, including the shipping dock. The process audit verifies that the process is followed, whereas the product audit verifies that the control plan is followed.
Many years ago, this used to be the job of the inspector who would randomly sample products and verify that the operator was indeed doing the necessary inspection.
The product audit asks the question: How does the organization know if the product checks as required by the control plan are carried out? This is the intent of the product audit. Organizations must sample products and manufacturing processes, including the dock, to ensure that the product dimensions, functionality, packaging and labeling are occurring as planned."
The definitions don't make any sense--they're typical AIAG bafflegab. For example, how does having an inspector look at product "...verify that the operator was...doing the necessary inspection"? Wouldn't the inspector have to see the operator inspection being done in order for the verification to be sensible?
It's possible (and even
laudable) to have a control plan that includes
no "product checks." So how would you do a "product" audit in accordance with the quoted definition?
Then there's this: "How does the organization know that the product checks as required by the control plan are carried out?" A better question would be "If you assume that the requirements of the control plan are not being carried out (which must be the assumption if product audits are considered necessary), what are you doing to solve
that problem?" Hint: auditing won't help.
This is not to say that auditing isn't helpful, but if the
reason for auditing is that you don't trust people, nothing good can come of it. Give people whom you trust good processes and the means to execute them, and you can go fishing instead of doing all that auditing, or trying to characterize different types of audits by nonsensical definitions.
If an audit doesn't help people to do a better job, it doesn't make any difference what you call it.