Friday the thirteenth — or why audit management is under a bad star. That's how you escape the curse!

At 8:00 a.m. on time, lead and co auditors leave the quality office and go straight to the first floor of the office building. Once in the realm of purchasing, the head of purchasing is already ready. The grey circles under her eyes indicate that she too worked late into the night to prepare her department for today in accordance with the audit. The two auditors skilfully pull out the questionnaire. This is a standard work — the authors are, of course, based in Quality Management (QM).

The cat and mouse game starts. While the purchasing department was still able to answer the initial questions satisfactorily, the tide is turning in the second half of the audit. One of the C suppliers has pending measures that have exceeded the deadline. QM does not provide for this. The auditors bravely pounce on this irregularity. The different perspectives of the purchasing manager and the QM department lead to lively discussions. In the end, one of the two sides must lose. The variance is noted! The auditors are satisfied.

Everyone involved is aware of the long rat tail that such a deviation entails. Countless hours are spent processing the variance, both in purchasing and in quality management. Even neighboring departments such as logistics and development are engaged in this. A lot of time, which could well be spent on far more important things, is moving into the country. A lack of common views between purchasing and quality management on this point leads to disagreements. This results in difficult conditions in almost all nuances of cooperation between these people, who should actually pull together to support the company's success in the best possible way. In the end, everyone lost. The company. Quality management. The purchase. But above all, people. Friday the 13th doesn't seem like a good day.

Everyday audit work in most companies works in this or something similar. Presumably, while reading this article, this situation is a reality in some company right now. It seems that there is no solution to the problems listed above. Yes - they do exist! And that's when you think differently about audit management.

Find the right path

I worked in quality management in the automotive sector, medical sector and in white goods (household appliances) for almost 17 years, primarily in strategically relevant management positions. For many years, I worked on the organizational and strategic development of the global quality management of a well-known German company. Part of this was the full development of audit management. Based on my experience with audit management in the automotive and medical sectors, which closely coincide with the negative scenario described above, it was clear to me that the system had to be rethought from scratch. My vision here was to create a new type of system and to design audit management in such a way that it is as efficient as possible for the company and enriches people.

Hand in hand with the new audit management

In the following, I would like to list the most important elements required to achieve the goals:

The audit questionnaire:

It was clear to me that the list of audit questions for the various processes should by no means come from quality management. Probably the best authors for a list of questions about the various tasks can only be the process managers themselves. Because they work on their area of responsibility every day. These people know best of all what is important. In addition to the fact that the questionnaires, if they are created in the subject areas themselves, are probably much better, they are also automatically accepted within the subject areas if they do not come from outside. Because people don't like to contradict themselves (or their questionnaires).

The auditor team:

If the auditor team comes exclusively from quality management, then every audit automatically has the character of robber and coward. One tries to uncover a crime aka deviations, the other tries to cover it up. It was therefore clear to me that the lead auditor is always the person responsible for the department. The lead auditor decides whether there is a discrepancy or not. This person is best placed to assess where there really is a relevant discrepancy. People are basically striving to be good. This includes department managers. Therefore, if a deviation jeopardizes the overall result (for which department managers are responsible and against which they are measured), the lead auditor - and thus the individual specialist areas - will appreciate the audit as a tool with which their area of responsibility can be positively developed.

The tracking of measures:

Tracking audit measures is usually a very exhausting process for all parties. In some cases, deviations from the specialist departments are not accepted from the outset and therefore the measures have not been accepted from the outset. There is always a lack of resources to process unacceptable measures. People are reluctant to invest work in things they don't understand or that don't make sense from their point of view. A constant battle between QM and other specialist departments. Due to the fact that the audit questionnaire is already aimed at the really important things in the specialist areas and the fact that the lead auditor who wrote the deviation does not come from a foreign area (such as QM), the measures are usually accepted by stakeholders from the outset. The department itself will work through the measures independently and in the relevant timeline. External control is virtually unnecessary. This saves an enormous amount of time, bureaucracy and energy.

The ultimate discipline — Empowering the company to produce quality:

Have you noticed anything? As a result of the procedure listed above, we have not only created a more efficient audit management process, we have automatically turned those responsible from the specialist areas into quality management employees. And that is only because we have given them responsibility for quality-relevant tasks. In the end, it is not quality management itself that ensures the quality in the company, but it enables the company to create quality. This is the ultimate discipline. And that is exactly what we have done with this.

Even though the procedures described above probably make sense to the reader of this article, implementing such a scenario in practice is very challenging. It's worth it though.

Too old structures and “we've always done it this way”? I have received these objections many times. Especially from auditors, some of whom have carried out audits for decades. Without questioning the status quo and encouraging a rethink, a turnaround will not be successful.