Did I Miss an Update to Pre-Audit Planning?

So, ever since the inception of IATF 16949:2016 I have submitted our pre-audit planning information to our auditor at least one month prior to our audit, as required. I did the same this year and the auditor is just now responding (12 days prior to our scheduled audit) that my pre-audit planning was being rejected due to the processes listed don't match up with what is listed on our process flow map. It never has because on the pre-audit planning it's just asking for internal performance metrics, which we don't have for every process. We determine what our objectives are, right? I have never had my pre-audit planning rejected so I'm a little frustrated. I guess my question would be, did I miss an update to the requirements? It has me second guessing myself now after 7 years of IATF audits.....

 

OK....but what's sad is this auditor was actually over all of the auditors from our CB at one time. I'm guessing she's on the verge of retirement and auditing as little as she can in her golden years. LOL

 

I’m guessing you have an auditor expecting a kpi for each process. Good luck.

 

That's what I thought, but not sure at this point. After further pushback from me, she just said that I was correct in thinking that we didn't have to list all of our processes in the pre-audit planning but that since it's a recert audit she would have to document all processes and associated metrics in her audit report. And further stated that she could submit it as is but that her audit report would get rejected if all processes weren't listed and would hold up the renewal of our certification. OK, so what does that have to do with me? She had all of our processes available to her when I submitted supporting documentation with my pre-audit planning report. To satisfy her, I submitted the pre-audit planning with all processes and stated which processes didn't have KPIs associated with them.

 

Lazy auditor standard. Like I said, good luck.

 

Good idea! I actually have this information in an email. So, she is either confident in what she's saying or has no clue that it can be held against her. LOL

 

That was my thought, too. She wanted me to do a lot of the leg work. What really aggravates me most, and I actually told her this is she waits until a week prior to the audit to tell me this when I submitted my pre-audit planning documentation a month ago. My thought to that is a lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part.

 

I know...you would think that would be common sense but you know how that works....

 

I've noticed the timing (for everything) is getting tighter each year. I got no kind of response to the preplanning info. Got my audit plan 2 days before the start of the recert audit. That was all after struggling to get the audit scheduled in the first place. One month later than it should have been, so we have 30 days less to respond to NC's. Not the auditors fault. They had to take the audit on short notice, and then changed the schedule a few times. The hassle just continues to increase.

 

Oh, that would be frustrating. You would think they would be more timely on their response to pre-audit planning when it comes to a re-cert audit. We just had ours last week and I finally found out from the auditor that the guy who was performing the tech reviews of their pre-audit planning was rejecting them when all of the processes weren't documented on the pre-audit planning worksheet. The lady that trained him said she never listed that as an expectation and told our auditor don't make the clients change their paperwork...too late. She already made me do it because she didn't bother to ask until after I submitted my revised planning. So, it's not a requirement. Just someone on a power trip it sounds like. LOL

 

It's frustrating to say the least. And... you have to coordinate with all your people from the top down. They make plans to get audited, but not sure exactly when that will be. For an operator, they are here every day. For your CEO, timing is a little more critical. It was really tough when the CEO would ask me when he had to be available and I had to say "you know, that's a good question".

 

That's why I always try to get our planning in a month in advance, in hopes of having an audit agenda at least two weeks in advance. I'm lucky if I get it a week in advance. This time around I think it was about a week prior to the audit but there were mistakes that I wanted her to fix before I sent it out. She would send me a revised plan and nothing would be fixed, so I just finally made my own notes on the audit plan and let everyone know that these times are flexible based on everyone's schedule and could be subject to change, depending on how each section goes.

 

I began trying to get the ball rolling about 8 months in advance....