Here is an additional thought.... You might meet the requirements of TS, unless your customers have additional requirements...Ford, etc...
But, as a very experienced auditor (1500+ audits), as a very experienced trainer (10+ years), I do a thorough training, with an objective that all of my students learn well how to do process audits. I even provide them a software system to help facilitate good auditing.
With all of my experience, and all of my teaching materials, carefully developed over 12 years, it takes me 3 full days to train ISO internal auditors, and 4 days to train TS internal auditors. And, we get pretty darn good results.
Then someone inside a company, who has been to one of my trainings, or maybe even a more basic training, decides he is going to train the rest of his auditors himself, to "save money." So, he trains them in a 4 hr class with a quickie powerpoint....
Really? How does that work? With all my experience, I am not good enough to get it done in less than 3 days...how does a much less experienced person train them effectively in 4 or 8 hrs?
So, what I am saying is, "How good, how effective, is it to train yourselves? When I look at internal audit results, and they have 3 CARs and a couple OFI's to show for six months worth of auditing... is the system really that good? Or, was the training really not that effective, so they are going through the steps of auditing, but leaving a lot on the table? How much "value-added" is the company leaving untouched because their "trained" internal auditors did not see it? Routinely, when people go through my training classes, and go back to their companies, all of a sudden they are finding 5 - 10 - 15 findings per audit. rather than 10 for a whole year. I did an internal audit for a very good client recently, virtually zero PPM client, and we had over 50 internal audit findings... all of which were written in a value-added benefit approach.
I think you have to rethink why you do internal audits, and why you do training the way you do. If you save $5,000 in training, but you miss $20,000 in value added findings, what did they company save? Do you wonder why the managers aren't very supportive of your internal audits? Do you wonder why you can't get down to zero PPM?
In training, you really do get more when you select an appropriate teaching venue. The question should not be, "what is compliant?" The question should be, "how can we get the most value for our training efforts?" Good training pays for itself. It is free.
There are some good consultants and trainers on Elsmar. It is time companies start doing training effectively, and quit trying to do it on the cheap. Do it well, and it is free. Some of us will even guarantee that...
