QIC Guru

The third party auditor will audit your system once or twice a year, so why do you have to conduct internal audits? The first and most obvious reason is, if you wait for the third party auditor to tell you your system is in trouble, you are missing the point of continuous improvement all together. The second reason is that the third party registrar does not consider the surveillance audit as an internal audit. The standard requires that “you” perform planned internal audits of your system based on status and importance of the processes and areas to be audited. If you do not know whether or not your quality management system conforms to your planned arrangements, or the standard, then how can you determine if you are improving? The ISO 9001 standard is based on the Plan, Do, Check, Act principle of continuous improvement. Internal Auditing is the “Check”, and without it you may never know when to act.

The internal audit process need not be a time consuming; there are many ways an internal audit can be accomplished. Every day we conduct countless audits without even knowing it. A manager who walks the plant floor may notice a process which is not working as intended, a worker may notice that the forms he, or she is using are outdated , receiving may find that the same supplier never send the correct paperwork with the products they provide; these are audits that never get documented. These audits are not planned, but they are audits none the less. The planned audits do not have to include all of the processes in your facility once a year, remember “Status and importance”. Go after the low hanging fruit first, (areas where you are having issues), then review the other areas as needed. Whatever you do, DO SOMETHING, or your entire quality system will fail to accomplish the goals and objectives you have set for your organization. My philosophy is simple, if you are going to invest the time and money to become certified, get the full value of certification or you will be wasting your resources for nothing.