time wasting findings

What is the best approach to take in the situation where an auditor latches on to something irrelevant to the process and works it up into some kind of finding, I was once asked why our VIM furnace was not compliant with AMS2750. What approach is best to prevent something like that being raised and what to do if you are not present and a colleague accepts such a finding without question.

Obviously a specific example has set me off which I will share but I think it would be interesting to hear about some of yours and how you dealt with them...

We had a customer visit from a new and important OEM and they did not like the fact that we were using repurposed wooden crates as waste bins (see pictures). I cannot see how the receptacle we use for old cutting disks can possibly affect the quality of the product.....
Anyway we're getting new bins, now we need to work out what to do with all the spare boxes.

 

Can't argue with anything @Andy Nichols said! One thought might be to get them to identify the clause (standard or agreement) against which they are writing the finding (a CB ought to do this anyway).

 

Yes it was a BV AS9100 auditor.

I guess that a lot of auditors approach a facility with expectations based on what they know rather than trying to understand what you are trying to achieve and why you have chosen to do it a certain way. I do like the idea of providing a quotation for costs associated with the "improvement"