Effectiveness of Internal Audits

I posted the following to my Linked-In pals in the Forum on Audit Professionals. It was in response to the question of how to measure the effectiveness of internal audits.

In the following discussion, I will assume the audit program requires the audit team to report adverse conclusions as FINDINGS, which are subjective statements of the disease, supported by a number of objective symptoms of that disease. This approach is quite different from the reporting of NON-CONFORMITIES, which are usually go/no-go (inspection) results.

When a Finding Sheet is distributed with the Audit Report, normal practice is to have the auditee perform corrective action (long-term) on the disease and remedial action (short-term) on each of the supporting symptoms. Corrective actions are typically handled by CARs (Corrective Action Requests) and remedial actions are typically handled by NCRs (NonConformance Requests). The auditee is required to respond to - not fix - the CAR within 30 days. This is called an "Action Plan" because it says what caused the disease and how they intend to cure that disease. In quality speak, this is called "root cause analysis" and resulting "corrective action."

I make this long introduction to let you know why I believe that the best metric for internal (and supplier) audits is
THE AUDITEE RESPONSE TO CORRECTIVE ACTION REQUESTS

If the audit team has done a good job of phrasing the report and building a case, the auditee will clearly see how all the facts (symptoms) support the conclusion (disease). If the audit team can show how the conclusion adversely affects CPR (cost, production, risk), then the auditee has an incentive to do something about it. Nobody, in their right mind, wants pain to continue!

So, if the response

• comes back within the requested 30 days
• agrees with the audit team's conclusions
• presents a reasonable and deep understanding of the root causes
• develops a number of significant and fundamental action steps

then the audit team - and audit boss - can pat themselves on the back and say, "We did a good job and helped to improve the organization's performance."

This supports my earlier posting about dumping and chunking to show system strengths and weaknesses.