Internal audit Archives

The Audit Program Manager: 4 Areas of Auditor Competency

2 Comments / ISO Auditing / By Robert Packard / Audit, Internal audit, Training

Passing a webinar on auditing does not make you competent.

This blog reviews an audit program manager’s four areas of auditor competency: experience, skills, training, and education.

Does your company ask incoming inspectors to update CAD drawings when a design changes occur? Of course not. Your company has engineers trained to use SolidWorks, and it takes a new engineer a while to become proficient with the software. Auditing is a skill that you learn—just like SolidWorks.

I’ve never met a manager who wondered where the value was in having an engineer update a drawing, but many managers view internal and supplier audits as a necessary evil. Instead of asking the expert how few audit days you can get away with, ask the expert: “What is the purpose of auditing?”

Internal auditing aims to confirm that the management system is effective and identify opportunities for improvement. Supplier auditing seeks to verify that a supplier can meet your needs and identify opportunities for improvement; therefore, if an auditor finds no nonconformities or opportunities for improvement, what a waste of time!

To receive value from auditing, you need competent auditors. Clause 6.2.1 of the ISO 13485 Standard states, “Personnel performing work affecting product quality shall be competent based on appropriate education, training, skills, and experience.” As the audit program manager, recruit people who demonstrate auditing competency.

Education

First, educational background is essential for auditors. You cannot expect someone who has never taken a microbiology course to be an effective auditor of sterilization validation. Likewise, someone who has never taken a course in electricity and magnetism will not be effective as an auditor for active implantable devices. Therefore, determine what types of processes the auditor will be auditing. Then, ensure that the person you hire has the necessary education to understand the processes they will be auditing.

Training

Second, auditors need to be trained before they can audit. The auditor needs training in three different aspects: 1) the process they will be auditing, 2) the standard that is the basis for assessing conformity, and 3) auditing techniques. If you are auditing Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturers with Surface-Mount Technology (SMT), then you need to learn about the types of components used to make PCBs and how these components are soldered to a raw board. I know first-hand that anyone can learn how SMT works, but it took me a few months of studying.

If your company only sells medical devices in the United States, you will need to learn 21 CFR 820 (i.e., – the QSR). However, suppose your company also sells devices in Europe or Canada. In that case, you will need to learn ISO 13485, the Medical Device Directive (MDD) (93/42/EEC as modified by 2007/47/EC), and the Canadian Medical Device Regulations (CMDR). I learned about ISO 13485 in a four-and-a-half day lead auditor course in Florida, MDD in a three-day CE Marking Course in Virginia, and the CMDR in a two-day course taught by Health Canada in Ontario. A 50-minute webinar on each regulation is not sufficient for auditing.

Finally, you need training in the techniques of auditing. A two-day course is typically needed. I took a 50-minute webinar and passed a quiz before conducting my first internal audit, but I had not developed my skills.

Skills

Third, an auditor needs communication, organizational, and analytical skills to be helpful as an auditor. Communication skills must include the ability to read and write exceptionally well, and the auditor needs to be able to verbally communicate with auditees during meetings and interviews. The most difficult challenge for auditors is covering all items on their agenda in the time available. The auditor rarely has more time than they need to audit any topic, and audit team leaders must be able to manage their own time and simultaneously manage the time of several other auditors.

Experience

Last but not least, an essential aspect of auditor competency is experience. This is why third-party auditors are required to act as team members under the guidance of a more experienced auditor before they are allowed to perform audits on their own. This is required, regardless of how many internal or supplier audits the person may have conducted. More experienced auditors are also required to observe new auditors and recommend modifications to their techniques. Once a new auditor has completed a sufficient number of audits as a team member, the auditor can practice leading audits while being observed. After six to nine months, a new auditor is finally ready to be a lead auditor on their own. An internal auditor does not need the same degree of experience as a third-party auditor, but being shadowed two or three times is not sufficient experience for an auditor (first or second-party). For more information about this topic, please read my blog posting on auditor shadowing.

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Internal Audit Training for New Hires

The author discusses a few proven internal audit training strategies (i.e., shadowing, auditing process owners) for new hires.

Once you have identified someone that you want to “hire” as an internal auditor, your next step should be to develop an “Onboarding“ plan for them with their boss. If you are hiring someone that will be a dedicated auditor, please ignore my quotation marks above. In most companies, however, the internal auditors are volunteers that report to another hiring manager. Therefore, as the audit program manager, you need to get a firm commitment from the auditor’s boss with regard to the time required to train the new auditor and to perform audits on an ongoing basis.

Winning Over the Boss

In my previous posting, I said that “The biggest reason why you want to be an auditor is that it will make you more valuable to the company.” The auditor’s boss may or may not agree with this statement, but the boss knows that the salary is coming out of their budget either way. Therefore, talk with the auditor’s boss and determine what the auditor’s strengths and weaknesses are. Find out which skills the boss would like to see the auditor develop. By doing this, the two of you can develop a plan for making the auditor more valuable to their boss AND the company.

Making Re-Introductions

Ideally, auditors are extraverted and have worked at the company long enough to know the processes and process owners that they will be assigned to audit—especially if they will be auditing upstream and downstream from their process area. In the past, the auditor may have been a customer or a supplier, but now the relationship with a process owner will change. Auditors are required to interview process owners, and this involves asking tough questions that might not be appropriate in the auditor’s regular job duties. Therefore, as the audit program manager, you should re-introduce the auditor to the process owner in their new capacity as an auditor. During this re-introduction, it is important to make three points:

The auditor is going to be trained first (on auditing and ISO 13485)
You will be shadowing the auditor during the audit, and
The auditor’s job is to help the process owner identify opportunities for improvement

By making the first point, you are reminding the process owner of the scheduled audit—well in advance. You are also informing the process owner that this auditor will have new skills, and the process owner should have some tolerance for mistakes that new employees make. You might also mention that you would like to get the process owner’s feedback after the audit, so the auditor knows which areas they need to improve upon to become better auditors. The second point should put the process owner at ease—assuming the process owner has a good relationship with you as the audit program manager. It is important to be descriptive when “shadowing” is mentioned. Both the process owner and the auditor may not understand the process or the purpose of shadowing. The following blog posting might help with this: “How do you shadow an auditor? Did you learn anything?”

The third point is the most critical step in onboarding a new auditor. For an auditor to be successful, they must ADD VALUE! As an auditor, you cannot pretend to add value. The process owner should know their process, and they probably know which areas are weakest. The audit program manager should encourage the process owner to list some specific areas in which they are having problems. Ideally, the process owner would be informed of this need before the re-introduction. Then the process owner can be better prepared for the meeting, and hopefully, they will have a few target areas already identified. Targets with associated metrics are the best choice for a new auditor because these targets reinforce the process approach to auditing.

Next Steps for Internal Audit Training

Once your new auditor has been re-introduced to the process owners, they will be auditing, and you need to begin the training process. As with any new employee, it is important to document training requirements and to assess the auditor’s qualifications against the requirements of an auditor. Every new auditor will need some training, but the training should be tailored specifically to the needs of the auditor. The training plan for a new auditor should include the following:

A reading list of company procedures specific to auditing and external standards that are relevant
Scheduled dates for the auditor to shadow another experienced auditor
Scheduled dates for an experienced auditor to shadow the auditor during the first two process audits (upstream and downstream)
Goals and objectives for the internal audit program; and
Any training goals that the auditor’s boss has identified for the auditor