Audit 101

July 17, 2008 at 11:52 am | In Business, Six Sigma, quality | Leave a Comment
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I have been extremely busy lately with quality system audits. Not only have we been going through the basic ISO 9000 audits, which I have been intimately familiar with for over 20 years, we’ve also welcomed auditors who focused on the TS 16949 automotive standard, and the German VDA automotive standard.

Some of the lessons I’ve learned about auditing over the years include:

  1. Try to anticipate the auditors’ questions. If neing audited to the ISO/TS standard, understand the questions implicit in the clause being audited. If it’s to the VDA standard, or something similar, the questions are spelled out.  Plan your explanation of what you do to meet the standard in such a way that your presentation of the facts follows the logic of the questions.
  2. Have all of the relevant information readily at hand. If you’re using a database, have the screen up and running before you start. If you have processes or procedures to reference, have them open or readily available.
  3. Plan the information. As much as possible, you want to be in control of the audit, so know ahead of time what you’re planning to show, and make sure you inderstand the information completely.
  4. Don’t raise more questions than you answer. If, in showing information, you have holes in the data or if the data shows unexpected results, be prepared to address the results before the auditor can question it!
  5. Run through your part of the audit with your internal team several days ahead of time, so that they can spot holes or concerns.

I like to see audits flow in a basic pattern:

  1. Describe the process or activity — flow charts work well
  2. If the process results in a metric of some kind, show the trend for the metric, and what your action plans are to address negative trends or points.
  3. Have evidence ready for actions, records, etc.
  4. Show how you are continually improving your activity.

We have another VDA audit next week…I’ll let you know how it goes!

Been Busy

July 7, 2008 at 9:40 am | In Six Sigma, quality | 1 Comment
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So obviously I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. Of course, my wife hasn’t been keeping up hers…and my daughters haven’t been keeping up theirs…I guess the blogosphere ain’t what it used to be.

Since the last time I posted, however, my life in quality has been busy. The facility in which I work is seeking to obtain certification to build products for the automotive market.  Having been registered to ISO 9000 for several years, the plant originally thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to slip over to the ISO 16949 automotive standard.

Silly company.

In addition to the ISO 16949, we also have to meet the German automotive standard, VDA 6.3. The difference is that third parties audit and cerrtify a company to the ISO standard–and you pay them to do so. But the VDA standard is used by the automotive customers themselves when they audit.

So in April we had our first VDA audit, and did better than we might have done, but were really raked over the coals. We followed that with our first official ISO 16949 audit, and did very well, thank you. Two weeks later, a major American supplier to the car companies spent a couple of days with us using their own checklist, and left happy, as well.

So my three month sabbatical hasn’t been wasted. I’ll try to get back to more timely interjections.

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