Standards Outlook: Trust, but Verify
Grouping product, service and process audits together is somewhat natural, because a process audit may include a product or service audit. I’ve dubbed the combination a verification audit....
Standards Outlook: Effective Audit Programs
Today's organizations need to be agile and responsive to the changing requirements in private and public business sectors. Properly directed, internal audit program resources can help an organization stay focused and uncover improvement opportunities....
Standards Outlook: Conducting a Document Review
Some industry sectors require documentation that has word-for-word traceability between the MS documentation and audit criteria. For internal audits, document reviews can be part of a routine audit of an area, rather than a separate document review. Docum...
Standards Outlook: Off to a Good Start
Clause 6.2.6 of the U.S. supplement for the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) auditing standard provides guidelines for establishing initial contact with the auditee....
Standards Outlook: Too Much Talk, Not Enough Auditing
I was attending a local community volunteers meeting when I was approached by a member. He knew I was involved in the standards community, so he told me his company just received its ISO 9001 management system certification....
Know and Follow ISO 19011's Auditing Principles
The auditing principles of ISO 19011 call for ethical conduct, fair presentation, professional care, independence, and an evidence based approach. The ethical conduct principle is realized throughout the standard because it is the cornerstone of...
Standards Outlook: Generating Audit Findings and Conclusions
The ability to identify audit findings, communicate them and determine the audit conclusions is one of the skills that adds the most value to a management system audit....
Standards Outlook: Process Auditing and Techniques
Process audits are highly focused, but their effective techniques are not always understood. Because there is no sanctioned process audit standard, anyone can claim to be doing process audits....
Improve Your Audit Interviews
The interview process is vital to the success of an audit, therefore, auditors must be able to use various techniques to gather needed information without appearing threatening to the auditee. The interview should be relaxed and comfortable, allowing...
Help Has Arrived
Change or pay a price for remaining the same. This saying applies to life in general and the auditing profession in particular....
Where's the Money?
Proving system and process auditing is a value added service has been a topic of considerable interest recently....
How to Implement and Audit the Process Approach
If you organize your management system according to how business processes work instead of by departments or elements of a standard, you are using the system-process management approach. The ISO standards community has provided several guidance documents ...
Ethics, Auditing and Enron
Were quality auditors to blame for the Enron scandal? No. Do quality auditors face ethical dilemmas such as those faced by the Enron and Arthur Andersen employees? must decide whether or not to...
Column: Standards Outlook: Use ISO 9004 To Improve Performance
ISO 9004:2000 is a valuable tool for improving an organization's effectiveness, efficiency and the quality of its products and services. It is a standalone document that should be used for improving organization performance....
Column: Standards Outlook: Ask the right awareness questions
ISO 9001:2000 says employees understand quality and customer requirements
The new ISO 9001:2000 quality management system (QMS) standard has opened up several new lines of questioning (interviewing) that will help organizations connect all employees to quality and customers. Prior versions of the ISO 9000 series standards...
Column: Standards Outlook: Auditing ISO 9001:2000 For Control and Improvement
Use PDCA for control and ACDP for improvement
Understanding of control is central to successful implementation of almost all standards. In fact, a standard may be thought of as a collection of controls management must implement for systems such as safety, quality, environment and accounting. A...
Revisions improve on the ISO 9001 standard
Auditors and Auditing
Most auditors who conduct third-party registrar audits are certified by the RAB or IRCA. RAB recently announced a reduction in certain quality management system auditor certification program requirements relating to work experience and witness audits. The...
ISO 9000:2000 will create challenges, require new competencies
All About Auditing
Third-party environmental and quality system auditors will be interested in the new (still in development) system audit standard. Since the new ISO 9001 standard contains many of these not-so-easy-to-audit requirements, an agreement was reached that requi...
