Quality Digest

Our problem is understanding the required audit days necessary to maintain a multi-site registration. We have a corporate headquarters, 1 manufacturing facility and currently 7 service sites that do the same thing and are governed by the corporate quality system. Currently we undergo 10 days of surveillence auditing every 9 months. This includes an audit at every service site (7), 2 days at our manufacturing facility and 1 day at corporate. We want to include our other service sites(8)into our certification but we have been told that the required audit days would increase to 18 days. This would be a terribly hectic schedule to maintain and very costly considering every site is in a different geograhical location.

Are there any guidlines on auditing multi-site registrations? Are you aware of how other multi-site companys handle this situation?

Any guidance you could give would be greatly appreciated.