After the Audit: Continual Improvement from the Audit Process

OUTLINE (Return to Main)

1. Introduction: course schedule, logistics, course overview
2. Corrective/preventive action
   1. Corrective/preventive action explained:
      1. Interactive exercise: Compare corrective and preventive actions
   2. Systems thinking for improvement
3. Reporting problems
   1. Value-added audit reporting
      1. Reporting workshop
   2. Problem reason/pain matrix (assessing significance)
      1. Reason/pain workshop
   3. Management thinking: exploring common goals
      1. Workshop — business terminology; solve puzzle, connecting reason/pain matrix items to income statements and balance sheet results
      2. The final step: understanding the issue is not quality vs. cost, but understanding quality and wealth
4. Principles and concepts of the corrective action process from audits
   1. Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) and what it means
      1. The process: problem solving to develop an improvement plan following the PDCA principles learned
   2. Evaluating requests for corrective action
      1. Keep the good ones and throw out the bad ones
      2. Workshop: get it right - explore reasons for wrong findings
   3. Taking action - Audit Function Improvement Process (AFIP)
      1. Discuss AFIP steps and the interrelationships within the organization
      2. AFIP workshop: case studies (both product and service)
5. Determining the effectiveness of corrective actions
   1. Verifying effectiveness and monitoring results
      1. Workshop: what to monitor, results and methods
6. Audit function management
   1. Basic and modern audit program management (including planning)
      1. Workshop perception audit (perception vs. facts) by auditing the quality audit program based on objective criteria
   2. Further causes of ineffective corrective action programs based on research and class input
7. Conclusion
   1. Develop action plans (action items) for implementing what was learned

Course Content/Main Topics	% Of Time Spent on Topic
Introduction: course overview	4%
Corrective/preventive Action	8%
Reporting problems	23%
Principles and concepts of the corrective action process from audits	39%
Determining the effectiveness of corrective actions	12%
Audit function management	13%
Conclusion	1%

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