Measuring audit success

We have recently gone to a GFSI audit scheme, and have done well for the first round. I want to be able to continually have a successful audit program, and the once a year external audit makes it hard to really measure that. Looking at doing some scored internal audits. The thought being that we know we are harder on ourselves then any external auditor. Therefore, if we score our internal quarterly inspections, we should see a continuous improvement of our audit score, which will reflect how food safety is doing as a whole. Other thoughts were to do an internal weekly inspections (maybe at a supervisor level) and score those as well.

 

Anyone do anything similar to this? How did you score - checklist, actual score (900/1000), pass/fail? Thoughts on how to measure or look at success of an 3rd party audit, other then just a score?

 Dear jkoratich712

 

We do monthly internal audit against the checklist for BRC system and measure our success in terms of non - conformances raised. We also look at the trends in of customer complaints and compare the scores with similar companies in the same business.

 

obviously our customers rate our success in term of conformances recorded in the external audits as it reflect an independent verification of our quality system performance.

 

Kind regards

Humaid Khan

Hi jkoratich,

 

I presume by "GFSI audit scheme" you mean a FS Standard which is GFSI recognized.

 

I presume by "scored" you mean numerical of the SQF type.

 

IMO, most such scoring systems are a concocted facade. KO sounds more like a boxing contest.

 

The FS reality is IMO better evaluated via Major/Minor/Serious/Critical  type rankings.

If you plan to give scores, do ensure that the people being audited can influence them. I worked in a company where we gave scores and published them. However, much of the problem was the hygiene crew and lack of budget for repairs, so when departments were marked down, it was often something they were not able to influence. Consequently no-one cared!

Dear jkoratich712,

                           Adding to the points raised above for good internal audits you need to consider:-

 

1) Auditor - Ensure that they are independent from the activity and the have enough knowledge to probe the area (replicate the GFSI auditor)

2) Audit scope - Make sure that each audit is defined and has a clear standard against it - less arguments and interpretation - You may need to be more stringent than the GFSI standard

3) Give to time to correct the NC's - There is no point raising the same NC's if they cannot close it off due to money / resource - This needs escalation.

 

Scoring is useful to show improvement but needs to balance it against focusing too much on the score and not enough on the issues

 

hope that helps

Neil

We divided our plant into five areas.  Each area is audited one week making a 10 cycle audit for all five areas.  As mentioned above, any trends should be noted, along with any scoring system.  A simple scoring system would not communicate to management what issues are still occurring.

Internal auditing is one way to "measure" your audit success, but that (as Charles pointed out) can be a very subjective approach.

Another way is to do trending and goal setting in your Annual Management Review. Things like customer complaints, pest control, CAPA, product holds, etc. cane be reviewed at your Management Review, "Lessons "Learned" discussed, and new goals for the upcoming year set with continuous improvement always in mind.