By Paul Harbath, Quality Management Consultant
Internal auditing has been a fundamental part of quality system standards since Mil-Std-9858 in the 1950’s. Along with corrective action and management review internal auditing creates what I refer to as: “The Big Three”. If you do the “Big Three” well your quality system will be very robust. “The Big Three” are so important that every time your registrar comes in to audit (even on surveillance audits which is a partial audit of your system) they will audit “The Big Three”.
In clause “9.2.1 Internal Audit” of AS9100D the requirements are you must have an audit program and it must be planned which usually means a schedule of some kind. It is also required that you qualify your auditors and assure their independence when performing internal audits.
Now the question: “How many internal audits do I need to do?”.
The AS9100D standard requires that you conduct internal audits at planned intervals. The frequency must be defined in your audit schedule. Other than those requirements it is up to you how often and what areas you audit.
My recommendation would be to perform a full set of internal audits annually. You can do those audits all with-in one month or an audit a month to spread the time required over the year. Just be done with the audits prior to completing your annual management review.
You must define the scope and I would suggest that you audit all the requirements of your quality system. Remember an audit is a “sample only” so auditing the entire system does not mean you have to audit every shall in the AS9100D standard. But you must just select a few “shalls” from all the “shalls” (requirements) in the standard. I have found that a simple audit schedule in Excel that defines the AS9100D clauses being considered for each audit works fine. Here is an example of what that might look like:
The number of audits and title of the audits is up to you. I would suggest that the audit names represent your companies functions. For example an audit name may be “Receiving/Incoming Inspection”. In other words you can create the schedule to make sense for you organization.
Just be sure that your schedule shows that you cover all the requirements in your system with your internal audits. The requirements include AS9100D along with any other standards that you may be required to meet. Also don’t forget that your audit program must include auditing your own internal procedures.
Paul Harbath is an industry expert with over 30 years of hands on experience in helping small manufacturers understand/implement quality management systems and lean/6-Sigma. Paul has a demonstrated ability to connect with the value adding employees by simplifying complex technical issues. Connect with him on LinkedIn.