Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hired External? Outsourcing Internal Audits

Re: Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hire External? Outsourcing Internal Audits?

For those who feel their internal audits (whether done internally or outsourced) are a waste of time, I would invite you to contact me. There are good ways to do it where they are definitely NOT a waste of time. I would be happy to help you get more value from them. It is a shame to perform the effort, and not get value...

Re: Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hire External? Outsourcing Internal Audits?

Helmut Jilling said:

For those who feel their internal audits (whether done internally or outsourced) are a waste of time, I would invite you to contact me. There are good ways to do it where they are definitely NOT a waste of time. I would be happy to help you get more value from them. It is a shame to perform the effort, and not get value...

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How kind of you to help others with auditing. I always try and put myself outside of the process I am auditing and act as a newcomer. Try to always question why things are done the way they are. Always raising questions to open the field of view for all.

Re: Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hire External? Outsourcing Internal Audits?

Crusader said:

... I always try and put myself outside of the process I am auditing and act as a newcomer. Try to always question why things are done the way they are. Always raising questions to open the field of view for all.

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That is a good way to approach it...

Re: Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hire External? Outsourcing Internal Audits?

Hi,

Hire me....hire me lol!

Seriously it does depend on the skills and experience you have internally.

If you are a large or medium organisation you would probably have the resources and experience available to do everything in-house.

Smaller organisations would benefit from having an independent eye on the QMS as there may not be enough personnel / experience in-house.

Hope that helps?

JP

Re: Your Internal Audit Team: Internal or Hire External? Outsourcing Internal Audits?

JCVP1969 said:

Hi,

Hire me....hire me lol!

Seriously it does depend on the skills and experience you have internally.

If you are a large or medium organisation you would probably have the resources and experience available to do everything in-house.

Smaller organisations would benefit from having an independent eye on the QMS as there may not be enough personnel / experience in-house.

Hope that helps?

JP

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In today's difficult economy, I'm not sure that is true. Everyone has cut back so much, and everyone is so busy, every company seems pressed to provide the necessary resources.

My earlier comment was not intended to address whether companies were big or small. I was specifically commenting to companies of any size that voted "no value - internal or external."

In today's economy, how the heck can a company afford the luxury of doing internal audits, consuming thousands of dollars of resources, and getting NO VALUE!

It is simply not a good option. My comment was that if you aren't getting value, talk to someone who knows how to unlock the value inherent in audits.

As AndyN has argued many times, much auditor training tends to focus on the mechanics of doing an audit, not how to do it well. If you aren't going to do it well, it is not worth doing.

Hi!

Thanks for your reply - I whole heartedly agree with you on this one, but then i am biased! I have been carrying out internal audits for about 30 clients for a number of years and it seems they value the independence and experience having someone external brings. It can also give the audit more significance as the company is actually paying for someone to come in - this often makes staff take more notice!!

Believe it or not most, if not all clients believe quality is the main reason why customers differentiate at the moment.

Much like marketing, quality is the first area to suffer during cutbacks, but this will get better as, if and when the economy picks up!

Anyway nothing to do with the post but hey!

For those of you who perform internal audits on behalf of a client, what frequency do you use for the audit program (I don't mean in Khz!)?

Also, what considerations do you give to the 'status and importance' requirement when planning for these audits?

In the past, I had performed audits for a client who was adamant that only one audit/year was all he was going to pay for for each site in his qms!

AndyN said:

For those of you who perform internal audits on behalf of a client, what frequency do you use for the audit program (I don't mean in Khz!)?

Also, what considerations do you give to the 'status and importance' requirement when planning for these audits?

In the past, I had performed audits for a client who was adamant that only one audit/year was all he was going to pay for for each site in his qms!

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Once a year "could" be ample, IF it was thorough. I'm curious if such a guy expected you to "audit" an entire site before lunch, write it up over lunch and be on your way home by 1:00 pm. There's a reason registrars have published schedules of how many audit days required to cover a workplace with "X" employees.

It also makes a difference if the bosses are managing by walking around or doing it long distance by email and fax, not even bothering to engage in a two-way phone conversation.

I head the internal quality audit team. There is always a problems, staff is reluctant!

Wes, I don't agree that once a year even 'could' be ample. The cases of companies being THAT stable are rare - in fact, since outsourcing internal audits generally happens at a time of layoffs, more reason to not wait for 6, 7, 10, 12 months to do another internal audit. Have you read this?

In my example, the client wasn't willing to pay for more than me to replicate the CB surveillance. He paid me the same amount he paid his CB, basically! And all the time I was visiting the plants, he kept wringing his hands saying he was going to be fired because of what it was costing!

Of course, I only did them for the time it took to get to all locations. Then, he took what I did, gave the tools and techniques to another, lower cost consultant (the guy he 'fired' becuase he wasn't doing 'process audits') and I haven't heard from either of them since. Of course, if his CB auditor knew what he was doing, I wouldn't be writing this......