How to Audit Your Manufacturing Business: Quality Control Audit Checklist
Do you know how to audit your manufacturing business? A common way of doing so is through a quality control audit which is a vital part of any manufacturing business. It helps to ensure that all processes are working effectively so your company can produce products more efficiently and minimize overall operation costs.
There are critical steps to properly perform a quality control audit. Here’s a checklist of everything you need to do to learn how to audit your manufacturing business.
How To Audit Your Manufacturing Business Successfully
1. Select Audit Type
You must identify the focus and goal you want to achieve with the audit. From there, you can select one of the following three audit types that best meets your specified objectives:
- System audits evaluate a company’s management systems and make sure that all elements and processes are effective. This type of audit also ensures that the development and implementation of these systems meet specified requirements. For example, a quality management system audit will review a company’s existing quality system to make sure that it fits with company policies and required regulations.
- Product audits examine the services and products that a company offers to ensure they’re compliant with performance standards as well as customer, government, and company quality standards.
- Process audits ensure that all company processes are performing efficiently within their established limits. This type of audit will check operation time and responsiveness as well as the effectiveness of each procedure and process specifications.
2. List Tasks and Perform Audit
Based on the audit you need, you’ll have to perform specific tasks to accurately measure the performance and effectiveness of a specific area. When it’s time to perform the audit, list each task in a series of steps. Make sure that you follow each step to ensure that nothing is missed.
3. Record Findings in Audit Report
When the audit is complete, have your auditors create an audit report to document all of their findings. Review each report and schedule a meeting to discuss the issues listed.
4. Determine and Conduct Corrective Action
Using the reports, determine and perform corrective actions that could fix the company issues listed. Take note of everything you do to resolve each problem in a separate report. This will help you to keep track of the methods you try and help you to better choose corrective actions in the future.
5. Schedule a Follow-Up Audit
After a corrective action is completed, perform another audit to measure changes caused by the corrective action. If system processes, performance, or products improve and are more efficient and effective, record your findings in a separate audit report and discuss it. Then you can close the audit.
If findings indicate minimal or no changes in processes, performance, or products, take note of this in a separate audit report and determine a new corrective action. Continue this pattern until things improve.
Company audits are the key to ensuring efficient processes and quality products and services. So use the checklist above to make sure that you do everything to perform a successful audit for your company.
Check out CPV Manufacturing’s blog for more industry tips.