A Quality Problem in Quality Auditing

In no country in the world does management speak ‘ISOese’

On June 23, 2013, Simon Feary, executive director of the Chartered Quality Institute, delivered the welcome speech at the International Register of Certificated Auditors’ (IRCA) 12th annual forum held in Japan. Feary made several bold statements, including, “Something isn’t working when auditors approach an audit with checklist in hand and a compliance mindset.”

Feary seems to recognize that a focus on conformity to individual requirements on an ISO 9001 checklist precludes a broader appreciation for the effectiveness of a defined system.

“We as a profession[als] are doomed not to deliver the benefits we all know we can deliver and should be delivering, and therefore we condemn ourselves not to enjoy the profile and respect that our companies have valued,” Feary said. “As a profession[als], we auditors are not doing enough. We are failing our colleagues in top management. And if we are failing business, we are failing the economy. I’ll say this again, because I think it’s important: As a profession, we who work in quality, and that includes auditors, are failing top management.”

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Comments

Which is it?

Denise Robitaille states that internal compliance assessments to standards are not meaningful and that the only meaningful QMS audit certifications and claims of compliance are from accredited certification bodies. This article says that 3rd party audits are not good enough.

Hmmm? Which is it?

I am offended that someone can make the claim that my 10 years of internal experience and knowledge of my employer's quality system, and my professional background, make me less aware and competent than an auditor from an accredited third party that has 2 days to go as fast as possible to cover all requirements.

I happen to agree with the message in Dan's article. 15 years of observing representatives from the accredirted certification bodies at meetings about standards might reveal more about the effectiveness and awareness in the 3rd party QMS auditing industry.

What is preventive action again?

Thank you, Dirk

Nobody understands this article either

Nobody speaks ISOese. Nobody understands this article either. It is so full of jargon and ISOese I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

I think the basic problem is the ISO system itself. The standard is generic and meant to be 'process driven', but it doesn't tell anyone who actually intends to use this standard what that means, or how to get there.

Auditors are compelled to audit to a general purpose, vague, sub-clause driven standard that is not matched to management success in general. No wonder auditors are criticized for not generating results; what results can an auditor actually produce?

The quality profession should look at the problems identified in this article (if they can determine what they are), realize the ISOese quality language does not match management language, and change the quality profession to better align with how the world actually works.

Quality Auditing by Registrars

The reason for poor quality auditing is that the auditors do not comprehensively review the QMS against the standard to see if it actually implements the standard. Registrars may not know what a good QMS looks like because I have reviewed many an have noticed that the QMS cannot be implemented because the processes are not sufficently prepared. Many regurgitate the standard without any flesh and registrars accept them. If the QMS is good, audit questions should be prepared from it and used to determine whether it is being implemented. This is my conclusion after years of being audited by regisrars and reviewing 100s of supplier QMS's.

Problem In Quality Auditing

I totally agree with the article. 3rd party audits are a waste of time and effort that is why there is no Senior Management support.

Internal audits are typically done by lower level in the organization to fill the Internal audit need of ISO 9001. TS16949 was supposed to be the elite certification but it is just as bad. There are very few auditors CB and internal that have reached the business process level to be effective.

Why do ineffective ‘systems of documents’ pass audits?

Dan,

I agree with you.

ISO/TC176 missed an opportunity to make it clearer that ISO 9001:2008 did require the process-approach instead of saying there were no changes to the requirements.

This pronouncement undermined some auditors even if they had wanted to examine evidence of how an organization had determined the processes that were essential to its management system.

Indeed, ISO/TC176 could have been bolder a lot earlier to focus everyone on the organization itself being a system of interacting processes.

Fortunately, many organizations developed their process-based management systems instead of blindly "implementing ISO 9001".

John