Use the update of your internal audit process as an opportunity to take corrective and preventive actions and find the root cause of the problem
Schedule your Internal Audits differently
The purpose of an internal audit programme is to plan the type and number of audits, as well as, to identify and provide the necessary resources to conduct them.
The Plan-Do-Check-Act model can be applied to the management of internal audits:
Plan: Define the audit programme
Do: Implement the audit programme
Check: Review the audit programme
Act: Improve the audit programme
Auditors must understand how the clause structure and requirements will affect their audit plans. Instead of auditing by clause, the organization may decide to audit by processes and across the organization.
Top Tip: Look at requirements from multiple clauses to fully assess a particular activity
Organizing audits by clause may limit the evaluation to just a subset of the planning, doing, checking, and acting requirements for a process.
Another method of auditing is to trace customer requirements as an input and the delivery of the product or service as an output, in order to assess department interfaces. Audits can also be scheduled for a specific contract or project to only assess the involved areas.
Remember that key business processes tend to flow across the organization and hence may touch on many activities and departments. Other processes may flow more vertically within the organization. For this reason alone, it is very important to understand the interfaces within your business processes and sub-processes and plan your audits accordingly.
This content (Part1 and Part 2) can be found here: BSI Blog
The full BSI 9001 Auditing Tips PDF brochure can be downloaded here: BSI Brochure
