Hello everyone! I work in a food packing/labeling company and we hour our audit coming up in about a month and a half. I am new (literally been here for a week) and I am a little overwhelmed with everything that I am trying to learn. I thought I would put this out there and try to get some advice from people that have been doing this for a while.
The company I work for is pretty small. We are actually all in one building. I just started last week and conducted my first mock audit today with the production manager to try and get everything prepped for our actual AIB audit.
There are a lot of things that need to be addresses and I am currently writing all the corrective actions for them. I guess my question right now is, how hard should I be for this mock audit? We are going to have a mock audit every week to get everything prepped.
This company has been without someone in the AIB position for about 2 months so there are a lot of things that have been overlooked for a while. I completely understand how this can happen but I am concerned about either coming down to hard on them or not hard enough and us doing horrible on the audit.
Does anyone have any pointers for me as far as how to handle the employees?
I already have all my paperwork in order for it. It literally now is coming down to the cleanliness of the facility.
Thanks in advance!
Jennie
Hi Jennie,
It's great that you already have the paperwork in order. Documentation can be a beast to handle at times. At least you can focus on your auditing and corrective actions at this point.
You should be as hard as possible in your mock audits. You never know what sort of auditor you will get, and it's better to be prepared than not to be prepared. At least that way, if a corrective action hasn't been completed in time for the audit, you'll have written it up as an observation, and the auditor will realize the observation was already noted and in process. As far as the mock audits, I'd start off with the harder items to correct first. That gives you more time to get everyone on board, and get those things corrected. For example, if you find that there are divots in the floor, and you wait until your last audit to bring it up, your team may not have enough time to correct it before the audit. As the weeks progress, you should be able to see progress in those areas and you can start looking at smaller issues. Those can get corrected quickly. Each week, review the progress from the audits before to make sure you aren't getting any repeat issues. By the last week, you guys should be putting finishing touches on your facility cleanliness and any maintenance issues that needed to be addressed.
As Watanka said, this is a team effort. It's not always easy to get everyone to see the importance of the audit, but if you stress the fact that everyone is responsible for helping pass, they may be more willing to work with you. In my experience, the write-ups come very few and far between because department heads will sometimes overlook things, or not provide strong enough corrective actions. Document continued repeat offenses and bring them to the department head's attention as well as senior management if the situation needs escalation. You may not totally have everyone on board during this first audit, but hopefully it will be enough to get you where you need to be. Just keep plugging at it, and in time you should see your hard work pay off.
QAGB
