Today we go to another controversial issue: Internal Audit. (Quality Audit)

The Internal Audit (Quality Audit) has key role in the quality management system (QMS).

The definition of the word audit underscores this importance:

"Systematic, independent and documented to obtain audit evidence and evaluating it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are met"

By this definition we will discuss some issues related to internal audit.

"Systematic process": The auditor should be systematic, ie follow a method, a system.

Organization and method must be the watchwords of the auditor. However, if it has not applied these concepts in the development of its work, the audit process will not provide relevant and reliable results to the system.

"Documented process": It does not help a good job, without being able to present it and prove it. The results must be disclosed and the methods exposed in a management procedure.

Process "independent": The auditor should develop its work so as not to be influenced in any way. The results of this audit will only have real relevance and trust with this premise being respected.

To obtain audit evidence and evaluating it objectively ": The evaluation of evidence collected during the internal audit should be evaluated in a meeting with senior management (including RD). A critical analysis of the system can serve for this meeting, but the schedule for evaluation of the QMS can be made according to need and desire of the company. Of course there must be a minimum space between the audits and their evaluations (usually three months at least), but an interval of one year, for example, may be too big for success, especially in the implementation phase.

It is evident after these points, that the internal audit (performed by auditors of the company itself or by external consultants) is an important step towards setting the QMS, making an assessment of whether the route taken was the right, and after making job evaluation and data collected (evidence), the corrections required to meet the goal layout.

Factors such as poor choice of team of internal auditors, poor training of the lack of independence during the audit work, the lack of documentation of the method or non-disclosure of the process might affect the audit process. With this, there will be corrections in the way of new or improved, and therefore held the frustration of the QMS and developers who try engaged throughout the process and gave all the credit over this.

Heaven and hell are closer than you think!