Auditing for Improvement: A one day basic course for any management system
This course shows how to make any organization better through the power of the audit. Manufacturing, health care, government, and education may all use the methods to improve their operations. Step-by-step instruction shows how to evaluate and improve any management system: quality, safety, environment, security, and the like. The course is specifically designed to cover internal as well as supplier auditing. It emphasizes deep process understanding by auditors, as well as communications, sharing, and trust. Small teams allow participants to develop practical planning tools and try them out in a safe and fun classroom environment. The end objective is to have a useful report that stakeholders may use to make system changes that improve business operations. This is a basic course and assumes no prior audit knowledge or experience.
Through a series of lectures and small group workshops, you will learn how to:
- Apply the nine steps of preparation to develop a deep understanding of processes and requirements
- Gather data in a way that represents actual work flow
- Analyze audit data to show system weaknesses and resulting effects on operations
- Promote and use the audit as an improvement, not punitive, tool
- Work successfully in sector-specific classroom teams
Practical takeaways
This course is loaded with practical information, including
- history of auditing, general model of auditing, duties of the audit coordinator
- three kinds of processes used by organizations, how processes make a system, first rule of auditing
- three criterial for auditor qualification, makeup of the audit team
- difference between document and record, levels of documents, types of documents
- power of flowcharts, four-box model of processes, six universal process affectors, turtle diagrams
- five kinds of facts, checklist vs. interview, turn turtles to checklists
- typical audit schedule, opening meeting
- tracing, corroboration, six steps for an interview, no secrets, protocols for examining records and observing operations
- objective evidence statements, audit finding definition, steps for writing a finding
- closing meeting, contents of audit report, no recommendations, closeout of audit report, audit records
- corrective and preventive action, four dispositions for remedial action, four steps of corrective action, closeout of corrective and remedial actions
Who Should Attend
Quality, safety, and environmental managers. Professional and technical staff members, including buyers and engineers. Process improvement project leaders. This is an excellent course to prepare for ASQ auditor certification. It is not designed to meet the needs of third-party conformity assessment.
Prerequisites
This is a basic course and assumes no prior audit knowledge or experience. Participants may wish to bring a one-page flowchart of their own company operations to share with others.
Materials
Participants will receive
- Student workbook with sample forms
- Personal copy of Quality Audits for Improved Performance, Third Ed., Arter, 2003
- Course completion certificate showing CEUs earned
Click here to download a pdf brochure.
Logistics
This is my best course to date and offered only through ASQ.