Internal Audit Checklist is considered to be a prerequisite to an Internal Audit. Well it is not written anywhere in the standard to have an audit checklist. So, now the question arises why to make an audit checklist? And what does it contain? making a checklist prior to an audit is an incontrovertible act, because it provides a streamline approach towards checking and ensuring that all the requirements of the quality management standard are met or not. Where, the Internal audit checklist is a framework of questions derived from quality management system and the procedures or processes followed by an organization. Hope some of your doubts are cleared let’s move on further to get rid of your other enigmas.
How to make an internal audit checklist?
As per requirement of the ISO 9001:2015, organization have to conduct an internal audit, which requires an auditor who will review the documentation and requirements of the standard, prepared and maintained by the organization. So, having an internal audit checklist can be beneficial. Thus, the steps to be taken to prepare the audit checklist are:
- Review the requirements of ISO 9001
- Frame questions according to the requirement of the standard
- Take into consideration the evidence required to which auditor should look into, in order to make sure that whether organization is meeting requirements or not.
- Also, identify look for in reference to the framed questions
Let’s understand the above steps with the help of an example: As per clause management review, some of the inputs to management review include:
- Actions from previous management reviews
- Customer satisfaction
- Non-conformities and corrective actions
- Audit results
- Availability of resources
- Identified opportunities for improvement
So, if the company produces minutes of meeting as record of management review meeting, then in that case: audit check list question is framed like: Has Top management reviewed QMS at planned intervals to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy, effectiveness and alignment with strategic direction of the organization? Where look for includes whether all the above mentioned inputs to MRM are considered or not and the evidence required include minutes of meeting. Likewise, there are other requirements in the ISO 9001, for which you can apply same approach while framing the audit checklist.
How to use Internal Audit Checklist?
During an audit, the auditor will look into the created checklist and found out for the required evidence and if evidence was found then it shows conformance of the process to the requirement of the standard. Thus, the whole idea of creating an internal audit checklist is to review the process and approve that records provide evidence of meeting requirements. As a one big picture both internal audit checklist and internal audit reviews the effectives of the defined processes in the organization in order to ensure that no non-conformance will arise even as the standard won’t specify requirement of a document for that process.
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