All you need to know about Internal Audits – a Q&A with Paul Oughton
Make the most of your internal audits with insights from Paul Oughton, DNV’s experienced ISO 9001 trainer. To further enhance your skills, explore our Internal Audit course offerings and gain the knowledge needed to drive continuous improvement in your organization.
Internal audits offer numerous benefits for organizations. At DNV we are ready to help you improve your company's performance. Contact us or enroll in our training course: ISO 9001:2015 QMS Foundation & Internal Auditor.
In this installment of the “Specialists Series”, Paul Oughton, our ISO 9001 trainer, explains the critical importance of internal auditing for a company.
Q.1 - How does internal auditing boost the performance of a company?
When used correctly, the internal audit can drive improvement by providing management with unbiased, verified evidence of performance and confirmation that all defined requirements are met.
The organization must determine the top-level processes (e.g., Sales, Design, Supply Chain Management, Production, etc.), including their inputs, outputs, and sequence of interaction. The planned result of these processes is typically a KPI managed by an accountable and responsible owner who monitors the target and acts when the target is not met. Top Management, who often own these processes, regularly reviews performance and supports the KPI owners in improving performance. The effectiveness of the QMS is dependent on all these processes achieving their targets to ensure optimal output from the organization.
When a process starts to underperform, it naturally becomes the most important process in the QMS. This is when the Internal Audit System should be deployed to audit the process, confirm that any corrective actions being taken are effective, restore performance, and ensure that requirements are being met.
Q.2 - How often should internal audits be conducted?
A mature system may require fewer audits than a start-up system, which will inevitably experience fluctuations in expected performance. These expectations are established through target KPIs that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). Nevertheless, in both cases, if a process is not meeting the planned result, there will be an inevitable effect on downstream processes. That process then becomes the MOST important process to address.
The internal audit is the best tool to deploy for evaluating and assessing a failing process. It can also confirm whether the measures implemented by the process owner to address the deterioration are effective, while also verifying that all other requirements have been met. At a minimum, if all processes declared in the sequence and interaction diagram are delivering their planned results, each process should be audited at least once. If the system is certified by a Certification Body and still performing to plan, audits may be extended to once every three years.
Q.3 - What are the main objectives of internal auditing?
Internal audits provide impartial, unbiased, and factual objective evidence to interested parties that the organization is meeting its requirements. These requirements include customer (contractual) expectations, applicable statutory and regulatory (legal) requirements, specified industrial standards, the organization’s own Quality Management System, and the ISO standard.
Internal, or first-party, audits are conducted by the organization, typically by its own personnel, though this duty can be outsourced. Auditors must be competent, based on their knowledge and experience, to achieve the audit objectives. They also need to be impartial and unbiased, meaning they should not be directly involved in the process being audited. Internal audits are used to assess conformity, evaluate effectiveness, and identify opportunities for improvement. They help ensure the organization conforms to relevant requirements, are vital for certification, and assist in preparing for external audits from any interested party.
Q.4 - What is the role of an internal auditor?
An internal auditor first and foremost is responsible for gathering evidence of conformance to Customer (Contractual), applicable Statutory and Regulatory (Legal), where applicable industrial standards, the Organizations own Quality Management System and finally those of the ISO Standard.
Additionally, the auditor evaluates the effectiveness of the organization’s quality management system by comparing key operating processes with their planned Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and reviewing customer complaints.
Q.5 - How does internal auditing differ from external auditing?
Internal auditing and external audits use the same criteria to perform an audit. However, internal auditors typically have less experience than external auditors, and the depth of the audit can vary. The organization conducts first-party audits on itself using impartial and unbiased internal auditors. To achieve certification to ISO 9001:2015, the organization’s Quality Management System is audited by a third-party certified auditor from a Certification Body, such as DNV.
Are you on the road to certification and not sure where to start?
DNV is ready to guide you through the certification journey and offers training to elevate your organization's proficiency in quality management excellence.
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Contact us to begin your path toward achieving quality excellence through our ISO 9001:2015 QMS Foundation & Internal Auditor training course.
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Enroll here: https://www.dnv.us/training/iso-9001-2015-qms-foundation-internal-auditor-53764/
8/7/2024 4:13:00 PM