Volume 9 · Issue 2 · February 2004

Contents

Page 1…

Use Sampling for Effective System Audits

Akio Miura writes that, for a management system to be effective, it must be subject to effective audits. But how do you ensure audit effectiveness when the audits cannot possibly examine all aspects of the system? The answer is audit sampling, but auditors and program managers have to take it into consideration that most such techniques have been developed for product lot acceptance sampling. And a management system audit is quite different from a product acceptance audit due to the differences in the nature of the products and the data or activities to be audited. To help you understand how sampling can be effectively applied to QMS and EMS audits, Miura examines how to develop appropriate sampling plans and techniques that will make systems sampling effective.