If you want to perform quality management audits in the best possible way, you should go through this article. Here, you will explore the four most effective tips to conduct a successful ISO 9001 internal audit program.
Quality audits are a vital tool that can help your organization grow and rapidly prosper. These tools provide mechanisms to assess the performance and effectiveness of a business. Apart from focusing on processes and products, these tools also take an active role in determining whether the employed strategies are performing as per expectation or somehow they are failing to provide expected outcomes. When deviation takes place, quality management audits help you detect the root causes working behind the relevant corrective actions. Performing an internal auditing program successfully is imperative to demonstrate your compliance with the ISO 9001 Quality Management Standard.
In this blog, you will explore four most-effective tips essential to the success of an internal quality audit program. Let’s discuss the four tips one by one.
A key secret to success is proper planning. Before executing the audit, you should ensure that your auditing program is well planned. Always remember that the activities taking place before the auditing programs are decisive for a successful ISO internal audit program. Your planning will begin with the preparation of a plan that will guide you throughout the execution process. Your plan should include all the activities in a timeline, such as scopes, detailed processes, departments, or products to be audited.
Planning is the initial stage at which your auditors should identify all the relevant documentation including quality policies or procedures. Moreover, you auditors should prepare a list of people who need to be interviewed for garnering information essential to the internal auditing. Along with the list, it is also important to determine a convenient time and method for interviewing.
The stage of preparation comes immediately after planning. At this stage, the auditors try to learn more about the organization’s Quality Management System or QMS. They minutely examine the system documentation. It is imperative that each member of the auditing team should be prepared for the auditing process. This is not the end. Each of the members should have access to the verification checklist. This verification checklist is imperative for guiding the auditors so that no details can be exempted or overlooked. Moreover, the audit team, as well as the in-house staffs, should be well-prepared for recording the observations and giving them the form of an accurate audit report.
Though every standard is different from others, the main aim of internal audits is more or less the same- identifying the actions causing loopholes within the existing system and working on corrective action. This is applicable not only to ISO 9001 internal audits but also to ISO 14001 internal audits, ISO 13485 internal audits, as9100 internal audits, etc.
This is high time you should shape your plan. This stage called execution takes place with a series of information, which determines id the concerned department is following the established standards and quality control procedures. At this crucial stage, your auditors will interview people who are involved with the process and take note from their answers. Depending on their observations, you should think of widening the audit plan and checklist. At this stage, nonconformities will be detected and noted. It implies that you will explore the situations, which are in conflict with the standardized procedures.
Successful execution of your quality management audit depends on the skills of your auditors to some extents. Experienced and skilled experts know how to perform a quality management audit program with perfection. Hence, you should be careful while choosing your internal auditors.
Once the audit is completed, your real task begins here. At this stage, the audit team will hold a meeting to discuss the identified issues before recording them in the audit report. This way, they will try to draw a conclusion by recommending effective corrective actions. These corrective actions should be able to resolve the detected problems related to quality management. The auditors will record this information along with the recommendations in the internal audit reports.
Once the audit report is prepared, you need to study the report attentively and follow up on the recommendations.
A Final Takeaway
By following these tips, you will be able to perform an effective internal audit program. To be assured of your success, hire auditors having hands-on experience and skills. Above all, let your employees learn about the audit schedule so that everyone takes an active role in the internal auditing program.
Damon Anderson is a business analyst and ISO expert having hands-on experience in dealing with quality management audits, ISO 17025 internal audits, AS9100 internal audits, etc. He also trains aspiring ISO auditors and pens down his experience in his own blog. For any information related to the services he offers, you can get in touch with him.