Quality Representative and I dont know how to Audit

[John Broomfield]

Lilbit,

Record keeping. Invite the process teams, led by the process owners, to come up with objectives for their records so they understand and share the purpose of keeping the records.

They may also change their forms to keep better records. Remember that data are meant to be analyzed to become information (valuable reports for better decisions).

An auditor or ISO are the worst reasons for keeping records.

John

 

[AndyN]

Re: Quality rep and I dont know how to audit

The audits will be different in that we are not auditing technical processes but quality management.

In the same organization, I'd suggest that since much of the management systems requirements are the same (almost word for word) they SHOULD be the same. Hence my concern...

 

[Randy]

Re: Quality rep and I dont know how to audit

Thank you all, I am very happy to have found this forum. My questions are about getting ISO 9001 certified, which is in 5 weeks. The title of the thread wasn't very clear, my apologies.

Randy, our product/service is employees because we are a consulting company.

I have no experience in auditing, but I'm learning as fast as I can, and want to do the best job I can. Everyone hates the processes, but I was involved with writing most of them and I want to see them used and produce results. I like the club

Noooooooooo, your employees are not your product, your product is the consulting that you provide, the employees are just the instrument or tool being used to do so. You're not getting paid for the people, you're getting paid for what comes out of their fingertips and/or mouth.

But you do have experience auditing and you do it everyday in one form or another. Every time you order something by phone, on Amazon or go to the store you verify your purchase against the receipt and what you ordered; every time you balance your checkbook you comparing what you have spent to what you have left and making sure everything is accounted for; and the list goes on. Auditing is nothing more than verifying that what is supposed to be happening actually is, you always go in to an audit already knowing what the correct answer is and you're just verifying the fact, when you find deviation you most likely have nonconformance. If auditing wasn't simple I wouldn't do it for a living

 

[Helmut Jilling]

Re: Quality rep and I dont know how to audit

Thank you all, I am very happy to have found this forum. My questions are about getting ISO 9001 certified, which is in 5 weeks. The title of the thread wasn't very clear, my apologies.

We are using a consultant, who also assisted us with ISO 20000 certification. So he is not being paid to do internal audits for us.

First meeting we did a gap analysis, and said we are 90% ready for the ISO 9001. He explained what ISO 9001 is, which I understand. That is when I was given the title of Quality Representative.

Second meeting he gave us the QMS, and we went through it page by page. Yesterday we received (4) "Certificate of Attendance" for internal auditing course.

AndyN, no, the consultant never did an internal audit, or even showed us how. Which is why my quest for help

Randy, our product/service is employees because we are a consulting company.

Michael, I'm sure my company will pay for at least one person, which will be me. I'll look for online courses and see how much they cost.

John, the CEO is looking to me to handle all of this. No one here has ever done an audit; we're the blind leading the blind.

I have no experience in auditing, but I'm learning as fast as I can, and want to do the best job I can. Everyone hates the processes, but I was involved with writing most of them and I want to see them used and produce results. I like the club

One option for the short term is to hire an experienced professional auditor to do an internal audit. This could cover the audit requirement, and also begin to train or mentor people in how to eventually do the audits yourself. The goal is not just to execute an audit, but to actually use it as an improvement process that helps the company improve. Then, follow that with good training. There are a number of us on this forum who can offer these services... keep reading, good info here...