Surviving an Audit....

[Shuffler]

Had an inspection/auditor from another company come in and spend a day asking questions and generally just filling out his paperwork.

They always want to know if your ISO this or that and want coppes of manuals on safety and such. I laugh every time we have one of these. The companies who send the auditors always send wrong drawings, wrong info, and have extremely poor communication. It never fails.

This guy said we ahould have all our tools calibrated on a regular basis. We told him we have never had a job come back because of a mic or tape measure being off. On the rare ocassion one comes back it is because of poor information or drawings from a customer.

The first job we are doing for this company ... they sent the wrong drawings, wrong rev. Going through their "correct" drawings for an hour and have found over 30 mistakes. I'm not half through them yet.

Obviously they spend more time on making books and manuals than they do actually doing work. Why they make manuals they do not follow is beyond me.....  lol

[gyrene81]

sounds like a government agency shuffler...doesn't matter if anything actually works or what it costs, as long as there are manuals and paperwork to back it up.

[Dichotomy]

ISO companies can kiss my rosie red posterior so can customers that require that nonsense

[BoilerDown]

As someone who previously worked for an FDA regulated company, I would say audits can be very important and at least in my former industry, should be taken seriously.  However in other industries I expect it may well be different.  Still, they wouldn't bother sending someone over if they didn't think it was important to make sure you're doing the work in ways they find acceptable.

[guncrasher]

I used to be a manager at an insurance company.  we would be audited at least once a month by one customer or another or our own in-house auditors.   there was always two ways we did things.  the right way and the auditor's way.  I learned pretty fast to tell them that we always did things their way.  so I always told them that.  never had a problem with any customer as they were always happy.  we did work for over 200 insurance companies and I never heard them say anything negative about us.

the auditors are not stupid and they know when their company's way of doing things is messed up, but it's not up to them to ignore it.  so tell them what they want to hear, they will do their reports and leave as happy as they came in.  arguing with them doesnt help anybody.

semp

btw never ever volunteer anything or open your mouth except to answer a question.  same goes for the irs.  i was audited about 4 years ago, they wanted to disallow about 20k bucks worth of exceptions.  as I showed up to the first interview i brought nothing except pencil and paper, listen to them tell me what they wanted.  as I sat in front of them I looked at my return and found out there was a 4k error in charitable donations.  one item was supposed to be 400 and it was listed as 4000.  I kept my mouth shut.  and they never bothered to question that single 4k entry, so i gave them nothing for it.  after mailing them the info they requested, they ended up saying that my return was correct.

o

[dedalos]

You guys are right.  If you accept payment by someone to do something their way, by all means lie and not do it their way because you know better   

It is not about who knows better.  It is about accepting payment to do something a certain way.  No one cares about what you think you know better or not.   Do not accept the payment if you have a problem with what is asked to be done and how it is should be done.  Basically,  by telling people to say they follow certain rules while they are not, you are telling them to steal and brag about it.  There is no need for the frustration.  If you don;t agree with it, don;t take the business.  Let them go somewhere else where they don;t know better.  You are too smart for them.

[Bodhi]

ISO 9000 series certifications are generally a farce.  I have dealt with many companies that have the certification that are completely incompetent.

[CHAPPY]

We went through 9001 ISO , was a pain. It is alot of paperwork, but when i Quote for a ISO company I add time to do all the paperwork so its not that bad of a deal. If they require all that documentation then put it in the quote and make them pay for it.

[katanaso]

We have an internal audit department made up of people who don't know how or what to audit.  They were either promoted to positions or simply applied based on years of experience at the company.

It is such a joke that we always pay money to have professional auditors come and check our systems, policies, and security.  This is for our IT department.

I should note that I work in a government entity, so it's not a surprise to me.

[CAP1]

ISO 9000 series certifications are generally a farce.  I have dealt with many companies that have the certification that are completely incompetent.

kinda like a good 90% of ase certified mechanics. 

[guncrasher]

You guys are right.  If you accept payment by someone to do something their way, by all means lie and not do it their way because you know better   

It is not about who knows better.  It is about accepting payment to do something a certain way.  No one cares about what you think you know better or not.   Do not accept the payment if you have a problem with what is asked to be done and how it is should be done.  Basically,  by telling people to say they follow certain rules while they are not, you are telling them to steal and brag about it.  There is no need for the frustration.  If you don;t agree with it, don;t take the business.  Let them go somewhere else where they don;t know better.  You are too smart for them.

no you dont understand.  we supplied the products exactly as specified in our contracts with the other companies.  we never short changed any company and we always did fulfilled our contract.  but we are talking about auditing done by people who dont even know what they're doing.

semp

[Shuffler]

As someone who previously worked for an FDA regulated company, I would say audits can be very important and at least in my former industry, should be taken seriously.  However in other industries I expect it may well be different.  Still, they wouldn't bother sending someone over if they didn't think it was important to make sure you're doing the work in ways they find acceptable.

Before they look at others maybe they should fix their own. Their own work is unacceptable. lol