ISO 9001 / 9002 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD

Clause 4.17 - INTERNAL QUALITY AUDITING

The requirements of this Clause are that your organisation must perform audits of all processes and activities covered by its quality system.

This will require the use of suitably-experienced, properly-qualified, independent Internal Quality Auditors. Unless your organisation is large, this may be outside the budget of your organization.

Don't despair - there is a simple solution!

There are a number of Internal Quality Auditors, operating entirely independently, who will be able to perform the audits for you. The cost of such auditors is generally much lower than the cost of training your own staff and keeping them sufficiently qualified.

You should only use auditors who :

• have attended and passed an approved training course, or similar
• perform at least 30 one-day audits per year (or equivalent)
• understand your business well enough to know if there is something wrong
• are totally independent of pressures from you and your senior management (ie able to "perform audits without fear or favour".
• are conversant with the requirements of ISO 10011-1, 10011-2, 10011-3. (The standards covering Internal Quality Auditing)
• In the new version of ISO 9000 (the 2000 A.D. version), the requirements of ISO 10011 will become a mandatory part of ISO 9000, instead of guidance as at present.

Anything less is really not suitable for the purpose. You must plan when each procedure will be audited, and must record the results. Failures must be re-audited and if necessary changes must be made to the relevant processes or procedures (see Clause 4.14 )