Have you ever been audited and felt like the findings the auditor was bringing up were minutia and almost irrelevant in the context of the major challenges and goals setup in your organization? Did you almost feel like they were mickey-mouse or minutia issues compared to the big tidal waves your organization is going through. But what is one to do, when maintaining certification such as ISO is necessary; and therefore complying with the appointed auditor's findings is part of the process? Well let me explain your options and provide some insights that may help you turn an audit into a win-win situation.

 

This article was published by Quality Digest on 03/24/2011.

If you have ever wondered what the difference between an audit, an assessment or a gap analysis is, then you might not be alone. When trying to figure out whether your company meets the requirements of a standard, such as ISO, API, Safety, etc.; chances are you are trying to decide which one of these activities is best for you. Let me explain the difference and give you a clear idea of what the goal of each one of those is.

This article was published by Quality Digest on 09/02/2010.

 

One difficult task of many companies is the ability to instill in its employees the mindset of error or problem prevention in order to prevent problems or mistakes from happening and to improve the processes in place. This consequently translates into a low to none ratio of preventive actions against corrective actions issued which may raise an alarm flag that your preventive action is weak. So how can a company boost the number of preventive actions and increase awareness in problem prevention and continual improvement?

There are some misconceptions about what ISO audit findings are.  In this article, I attempt to explain clearly what audit findings are, what types of findings may be generated in an audit and the guidelines that is widely use to categorize audit findings.