我劝老板参与内审的邮件

我劝老板参与内审的邮件, 看看兄弟姐妹们有没有什么好的意见 :)

Hi XXX

Internal audit, per se, is to provide an overview of the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole system to top management, not merely to meet ISO requirements. Internal audit is always followed by a management review.

Our internal audit method has been criticized every time whenever external auditors visited us. They constantly ask why almost all of the findings were made by XXX and me. They questioned the competence of our auditors.

For auditing, two stages are very important. One is preparing the checklist. This involves process knowledge, audit purpose, and the audit criteria. The other is the auditing process itself. This involves insight to process, interview ability, and the willingness to find improvement opportunities.

Method 1:
Currently we have 7 internal auditors. This is how we conduct internal auditing: I prepare detailed checklists; the assigned auditors review the processes/documents, and fill in the checklists. In short, the focus is on preparing the checklist. Attachment1 is a sample checklist of this method.

The advantage of this method is that it is a sure way to cover all requirements of the ISO. The disadvantage is that our actual auditing process is weak. The 2nd and 3rd party auditors focus on the auditing process instead.

Method 2:To overcome this disadvantage, we can audit this way: Reduce auditor number to 2 or 3; use barebone checklists, like attachment2 (The items on this checklist are for reminding purpose, don’t cover all the items to be audited). The auditors will have to add observations on the checklist (not simply filling in yes or no).

The advantage of this method is that it will force auditor to look for things to fill in, the disadvantage is that we may actually miss one or two ISO requirements. The 2nd and 3rd party auditors use this method, and they always see things our auditors failed to see.

Method 3:
This is a combination of method 2 and management commitment. Basically it is the same with method 2, but it has top management involved in internal auditing.

Top management participating in audit has these advantages: It’s easy to demonstrate top management commitment to 2nd and 3rd party auditors; it’s easy to show all the employees that top management is serious with the system, and most of all, as I stated at the beginning, internal audit is a tool for top management, nobody can know what the top management want to achieve through internal audit better than the top management himself.

Japanese have used this method, and made remarkable achievement. They call it The presidential Quality Audit. See: http://deming.eng.clemson.edu/pub/den/14points.pdf

It’s your internal audit. It’s your right to pick which method you want to use.

Best Regards