Why is internal auditing important to your quality management system (QMS)? To ensure that processes conform to ISO 9001 requirements, or to ensure that the company conforms to management’s own defined plans? Although audits can be done for both reasons, the second choice is more important. Internal auditing doesn’t merely assess conformity to requirements; it also helps establish a sound foundation for improvement.
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How? Internal auditing helps ensure that any actions taken to improve operations, based on current performance indicators, are sensible. If performance indicators suggest improvement actions are warranted, those actions might be misguided if the defined system differs from how the system actually operates.
Let’s just forget about ISO 9001 for a moment and think about plan-do-check-act (PDCA). Audits are associated with the check phase of PDCA. Like stage 2 certifying audits, internal audits should focus strictly on assessing conformity to planned arrangements. Of course, verifying that performance indicators are in place—as defined somewhere—is part of the internal audit. And although identifying any improvements if they come up is useful, management should basically be interested in knowing if work is being conducted according to whatever plans it has defined and documented.
Why? In theory, management is going to take actions based on process performance measures or indicators (also associated with the check phase of PDCA). When deciding on which actions to improve, management acts on the assumption that the processes are being performed as planned. Management plans on improving the existing plan.
If the way operations are actually being conducted differs from the way they are planned—and documented for objectivity—something must change. Otherwise, actions taken during the act phase of PDCA risk being ineffective at best, counterproductive at least. In other words, if the way a process is done differs from the way it’s planned, uninformed actions taken to improve the plan may not address needed changes to how it’s actually done. They just fix a paper plan that wasn’t effectively implemented in the first place—which might itself be the cause of quality problems.
Processes tend to wander (some more than others) from how they were defined. This happens sometimes due to a lack of clarity in how the plan is defined, sometimes due to unrecognized process improvements made ahead of plan, and sometimes because nobody really cares. For whatever reason, if operations aren’t being conducted according to plan, management should want to know that. At least that might prevent taking actions to fix a fiction. And measures of a fictitious process are just not very useful.
Therefore, when actual operations differ from planned arrangements, action must be taken to make the two match. Either the documented procedure must change to match the improved working practice, or the working practice must be brought back into line with the documented procedure.
When operations are performed according to plan, performance indicators are meaningful.
Internal audits help ensure the plan and the do phases of the PDCA cycle are consistent enough to make process measures effective (check), providing good factual information on which management can base sound improvement decisions (act).
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