ISO / AS Internal Auditing Solutions

Two types of audits are required to become registered to the ISO /AS standards:

1. auditing by an external 3^rd party called a registrar (the external audit); we can refer you to a qualified registrar

2. auditing by internal (or contract) staff trained to audit your processes (the internal audit)

The goal is to continually improve your processes. The majority of continual improvement comes from corrective and/or preventive action. Therefore, it is essential to do your internal audits more than once per year, the minimal requirement. We recommend 4 internal audits per year doing a subset of the processes each time. This will yield a more thorough review of your processes, and you will be well prepared for your registrar who audits once per year.

For the ISO /AS standards, auditors are expected to go beyond mere auditing to the standard. Auditors should be experienced at auditing at the process level to ensure compliance to the standard, to internal procedures and work instructions and know how to assess objective evidence. This means they are expected to make more judgments (based on objective evidence) on what is effective, rather than simply adhering to what is prescribed in the standard.

Companies bring us in to conduct their internal audits for a variety of reasons. The reasons include:

- Internal Audits completed with minimal interruption to your schedules
- More consistent application of the QMS standards
- Less training required internally, therefore, more time to spend on your core business
- A thorough review of your Quality Management System (QMS) leading to more continual improvement opportunities
- Taking the “fear” factor away from having people from one department reviewing a companion department