Internal Quality Auditing

Internal Quality Auditing,
Working in the Quality Management Systems, when your job description includes the Internal QMS Auditing. Now, to carry out an audit activity, first you have to plan the audit, make an audit team, educate the team in a proper manner, and finally audit the company.
Lead internal auditors have to manage all the activities of audit from planning till the follow up of corrective action.
As a leader, you might be making an Internal Audit Plan; most of the companies have Internal QMS Audit scheduled annually or bi-annually, but in those companies where the system is highly unstable the frequencies of audits have to be increased. As per the requirement of system the internal audit frequency can be increase up to every three months.
Well, after the decision of the frequency, now you're ready to make an audit plan, list all the departments which come under the circle of the Quality Management System and divide them among a week or some days. The Internal Audit Plan usually contain the departments to be audited, which clause are applicable on the department, which procedures have to be audited, the name of the auditors which are going to visit the department, and the name of the auditee who are going to assist the auditors, the time of the audit, etc.
After the audit planning, here you are ready for the training of the audit team, before the audit, the audit team must carry out an pre-audit meeting / training session of the auditors, so that they should know how they are going to carry out the audit, they can also discuss the key check points, as well the weaknesses and strengths of the auditee / their respective departments. As we all know that the auditor team comprises of all the departments of the company, thus it might possible that most of them are not aware of the operations of a certain department, so a quick overview will be helpful for them to carry out the audit.
However, the lead auditor should tell again the departments the team going to audit and which person they are going to meet and what are the weaknesses and strength and how to make that auditee speak to them and how the auditors must speak to the auditee. As a lead auditor it is important so the team might not face any confusion during the audit and thus the audit must be carried out peacefully.
Well, how to carry out an Internal Audit. Wait for the next posts. Thanks

By: Syed Owais Mukhtar