What practice do you tend to use when performing an internal audits. Do you use various checklists across different standards, or do you use a process approach driven from a flow charts?

Any comments welcome

Thanks

Gregor

short answer - I combine both the process and standard based approach for internal audits, ISO 9001:2000, creating seperate audit reports by department and also by standard. This demonstrates conformance to internal procedures as well as your standard.

long answer - The standard that you need to conform to should point you in the right direction. Ask yourself what you need to show auditors from another organization when they view your internal audit reports. 

I like to divide the internal audit into functional or logical areas first, and collect all the related procedures - documents -  flowcharts - whatevers. Then start organizing using the audit module. Create an audit record for each area, and add all the related documents and department to the scope. use that organized list to develop a checklist and save that in the audit record so you have it next time.

You may also need to review whatever standard you are working with, to verify that you are also auditing anything related to compliance with said standard. Create a seperate audit record that references the areas of the standard that were covered in your process approach, then you can cover anything that hasnt been hit with the process approach. Here is an example, at my company we have procedures for the receiving, storing, and tracking of material. These procedures cover ISO 9001 7.5.4 control of customer property, so there is no need to cover that while auditing based on the standard.

 Great answer, thanks for replying techguru. And welcome to the community!

Similarly I use Vertical audit

Reconstructing the entire processes involved (for a medical laboratory that is a clinical sample for analysis) and seeking evidence that validated methods were followed, by trained and competent staff, using calibrated equipment, with reagents supplied by UKAS / ISO accredited companies of proven history etc etc. All from a bank of questions derived from CPA (ISO15189) or UKAS (ISO17025) standards.

On a 2 yearly cycle I also audit all the standards (i.e. a Horizontal audit of the QMS).

This is complemented by Examination audits (or "witnessing") where individuals demonstrate that they follow the methods accurately and have an underpinning knowledge of what they are doing. This is arguably the most important audit (certainly often the most illuminating ..... you get what you inspect not what you expect!) and allows many 'what-if' scenarios to be debated. 

For each and all of these audit types I create checklists from the question bank I pre-populated within Q-Pulse audit module.