"Full Cycle" of internal audits

Good morning Andy Nichols-
To your point, I believe a significant amount of inference, opinion, and confusion circulate around this term. I likewise find and know of no official reference within any of the ISO family of standards, including the referenced ISO 19011.

My past experience has seen this term used mostly in reference to a completion of an audit schedule, which includes every clause of the applied management system standard. For example, an audit schedule for ISO 9001:2008, which includes audits requirements for each of the 5 auditable primary clauses (4-5-6-7-8), has been referred to as an "audit cycle"...or "full cycle". The implication being that once the organization had completed all the audits on the schedule (and thus audited against each of the applied management system clauses), then a "full cycle" had been completed.

Hope this helps.

 

Hi,

i'm probably a couple years late with this response. My understanding of a full cycle of internal audits, is auditing all the processes int he QMS. (at least once- some processes may be scheduled more than one based on risk).

Suriaya

 

Full cycle for me is like completing all the PDCA steps. So if all the phases of audit from initiating the audit to verification and closure of the corrections and corrective actions were done, then a full cycle of audit is completed.