Internal Audit Cycle; best practice & maximising efficiency

Hi all,

 

 I am taking a fresh look at our Internal auditing and would like to reduce our Audit cycle time without putting too much strain on our business teams. Does anyone have any tips or advice for best practice or even systems that might improve our efficiency? (currently our reporting is paper based)

 

Many thanks for your time.

Hi Scullerdude,

 

Best practice is based on risk and history. More info may help if you want advice.

 

Regards,

 

Tony

Hi Scullerdude ,

 

If you would like a logical approach to cycle time  borrowed from the equipment world –

 

Method 1: Automatic adjustment or “staircase” (calendar-time)

Each  time  an  instrument  is  calibrated  on  a  routine  basis,  the  subsequent  interval  is  extended  if  it  is

found to be within e.g. 80 % of the maximum permissible error that is required for measurement, or

reduced  if  it  is  found  to  be  outside  this  maximum  permissible  error.  This  “staircase”  response  may

produce a rapid adjustment of intervals and is easily carried out without clerical effort. When records

are  maintained  and  used,  possible  trouble  with  a  group  of  instruments  indicating  the  need  for  a

technical modification, or preventive maintenance, will be known.

 

 

Guidelines determination Calibration Intervals.pdf   66.95KB   125 downloads

Thanks for your responses. I must apologise as my question is not clear.
What I am really interested in is anything that can reduce the time to complete an Internal audit from planning, to sign off of any corrective action and completion. I am hoping to find tips or recommendations for systems that can automate or reduce the time taken to complete some of the more time consuming tasks involved, such as preparing checklists,data capture and report writing etc. Obviously I want to maintain the robustness of our current paper based system.
Many thanks.

Hi,

 

Creating an internal audit schedule (or verification schedule) with responsibilities and frequency will help you divide the time for the internal audit over a 12-month interval. You can use a document register to make sure you are reviewing all the forms, and define a validation percentage. For some records, you will have to have 100% review (such as CCPs) and for others you can specify a percentage of the total for review. The validation percentage should be documented on a risk assessment. 

 

Thanks

amppyr