Internal Audits - are they really for "Improvement"?

I was involved in my company internally having discussions on the merits of Lean vs. Six Sigma. We have a pretty good training program on lean, but nothing on Six Sigma. We HAVE black and green belts, but they are trained by attending outside classes at community colleges and the like. It is supported by the company and encouraged, but the company itself doesn't have Six Sigma as a formal program with formal internal training and such. For scale, we are a global company, but small for a global company. We certainly have the overhead for a formal program, we just choose not to.

I am a fan of Six Sigma. And when I got the ear of the individuals who set the programs up, I asked them once why we didn't have more structure to Six Sigma. It basically came down to a cost/benefit ratio. Their stance (right or wrong) was that Lean concepts were easier and cheaper to teach. And that while they may not necessarily root out a chronic, deep rooted problem, they are effective at "picking up the $20 bills lying all over the floor." So, my company is all about lean. With an option to buy Six Sigma once the lean gains slow down.

To that end, the expectation of auditors is that the receive lean training and this is checked during audits. There is then a group of lean folks who take the auditors findings and do the value stream mapping, and propose solutions, etc. Many of the auditors are involved in this process and can do it because of all the lean training. But the requirement of the baseline auditors is that they can recognize the signs of "needs some lean love" on a process.

 

Our auditors of course focus on QMS, lean is secondary. It sort of becomes also a question of overlap. Many of these systems have common ground. So if you look for one thing in QMS, then in a few weeks you roll around and examine it for your layered audit, then again for your lean audit..... that's double handling.

The message it sends to the floor then shifts to "all these audits are a thing we have to do" instead of a tool to make things better.

Understanding is very much the key. Too many bosses want "some audit." They don't even know what it is they want, they just want it. So you do it because they don't listen and you give up. And you make this layer cake of annoyance to the floor, except it's not a TASTY layer cake. It's a bad one.

I agree very much with Jennifer. Improvement can come from anywhere. 6 Sigma is big on making sure you don't skip any steps, and that is a key to a successful DMAIC project. I have seen many fail because someone shortcuts the process. But that doesn't mean the converse is true - that being if I come up with a solution, I don't have to package it in a 6 Sigma wrapper. Many solutions don't need it.

 

Not for us. Our procedures are much more strict than any ISO regulation, and we have committed to following our own procedures. Therefore, that is largely what our internal auditors look for. Adherence to procedures, or lack of clarity in procedures that could cause confusion.

 

Same here with Miner. Auditors should focus first on "effectiveness". If a finding warrants it, OFIs can be determined. But OFIs are usually offered by people with "expertise" on the audited process. I infer on this because I subscribe to the OFI definition of the Rules for Achieving IATF Recognition which specifies that "An opportunity for improvement is a situation where the evidence presented indicates a requirement has been effectively implemented, but based on auditor experience and knowledge, additional effectiveness or robustness might be possible with a modified approach".