Common Mistakes to Avoid in ISO 9001 Quality Management Audits

This article attempts to point out the key mistakes that organizations make while conducting quality audits to secure their ISO 9001 standard.

Organizations of all types and sizes strive to implement the ISO 9001 quality management standard to show compliance of their QMS (Quality Management System) to certain best practices. Achieving compliance is not as easy as it sounds. Often, companies get stuck fulfilling all the requirements and best practices specified by the ISO 9001 standard and that results in nonconformance of the QMS. That is why quality audits are necessary. They are thorough inspections of the QMS done by internal members to ensure compliance and secure the ISO standard for the organization. Quality audits are conducted frequently at agreed intervals before applying for the certification to fully ensure that the QMS conforms to the defined requirements of the standard and is hence eligible to get ISO certified. Audits are highly recommended because they simultaneously help in evaluating the competency of the QMS, the effectiveness of the processes, and conformity of the products/services to the customers’ expectations.

Quality audits are no doubt a comprehensive and time-consuming process. They need to be conducted by expert internal members (or hired professional internal auditors). The following are some of the serious mistakes you can make while conducting audits which can cause you to fail at securing the certification.

5 Common Mistakes of Quality Audits to Avoid when Getting ISO 9001 Certification

Improper Documentation

Organizations seeking to get a QMS established need to collect, organize, and save a lot of data regarding various processes, quality performance metrics, and so on. Therefore, documentation is an essential part of the QMS and it needs to be audited for this reason. The auditors, before assessing the QMS, would meticulously check all the documents to ensure they are satisfied at elaborating your processes, quality procedures, and performance data on to employees, managers, and other stakeholders.

Lack of ISO 9001 Knowledge

If you do not completely understand the ISO 9001 requirements, it is hard to develop and establish a fully compliant QMS. The auditors can easily see your ISO knowledge by evaluating the documented or implemented QMS. They can identify the gaps or nonconformities with the standard’s requirements and declare the QMS as ineligible to be certified.

Poor Strategies for Corrective Actions

Audits are self-evaluation processes and the auditors are going to discover inefficiencies, mistakes, blunders, or nonconformities in the QMS which you need to correct. Hence, you should have proper strategies for enforcing the remedies or corrective actions for the identified faults in the QMS. Auditors consider it is a good idea for an organization to have specific strategies to bring forth changes in the QMS to rectify the mistakes and non-conformance issues. If they did not find any proper enforcement strategies in your organization, they may consider you incompetent to handle the nonconformities and hardly ready to be ISO 9001 certified.

Insufficient Employee Training

Employee training and preparedness is an essential part of the ISO 9001 standard. They should be provided adequate training to help them understand the role of the QMS and how they can work with it to achieve the proposed quality goals of the organization. Hence, evaluation of employee competency is a key part of the audit process. Auditors interview the employees and make queries to understand their awareness about the QMS and competency at achieving the goals. If the auditors find employees are not trained or not assigned with proper responsibilities, they can consider your organization to be unprepared for the ISO certification.

Getting Unqualified Auditor

The most basic mistake you can make is the poor selection of auditors. You must be careful at choosing the auditors whether they are from within or outside the organization to conduct the quality audit. They must be trained and experienced at performing all the phases of the audit efficiently. If they are not professionals or do not have adequate ISO knowledge, they can miss out on non-conformance issues and make your organization vulnerable to rejection in the certification audit stage.

Quality audits are an extremely effective self-assessment tool for businesses. They help them to improve their processes and QMS after identifying the problems and also ensure their compliance with the ISO 9001 quality management standard. However, audits need to be conducted by competent persons and also by following some key principles. By making any of these above mistakes, you can create big obstacles in your audit process and affect the success of your ISO 9001 certification. Hence, make sure you have professionals perform the audit procedure and avoid them.

Author Bio:

Damon Anderson is the owner of a premier ISO consultancy that guides and assists organizations in diverse sectors to get certified with ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and other important management standards. He is specialized in the ISO 9001 quality management standard and likes to spend his free time writing articles that better guide businesses in achieving compliance with ISO 9001.

Contact Details:

Business Name: Compliancehelp Consulting, LLC

Email Id: info@quality-assurance.com

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