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The Audit System

Auditing is a cornerstone of any management system for quality, environment or work safety. Conducting audits ensures conformance to relevant standards and provides an important contribution to the continual improvement of systems and processes. The audit process follows the classical PDCA principle (Plan/Do/Check/Act) and is effectively and efficiently supported by the iQ-AUDIT module.

For iQ-AUDIT the type of the managed audits is irrelevant. It supports any audit standard as long as there is a questionnaire representing it and being maintained in the software. The same can be said about the audited unit. It does not matter where the audit takes place - if in the own company (as an internal or 1st party audit or as a certification or 3rd party audit that is conducted by a certifier that should be managed in the software for the purpose of action management and statistics) or if at a supplier. In any case iQ-AUDIT is a flexible assistant.

Workflow

iQ-AUDIT follows the PDCA principle. The figure shown on the right side shows the most important supported process steps distributed to the 4 phases of this cycle.

All audits are based on questionnaires. These represent the standards or requirements of which the conformance or fulfilment is audited. iQ-AUDIT is not limited to a specific set of questionnaires but can be flexibly tailored to any imaginable needs.

Prior to auditing is planning. Audits are planned as part of an annual or multi-year planning (audit program) but could also be created spontaneously.

The rather rough planning of the audit program results in audits of which the fine planning is done as audit agendas that are developed in cooperation with the audited unit.

Performing an audit consists of the actual auditing activities (such as interviewing or inspections) and with respect to the software mainly of the input of findings observed during the audit. Entering findings is often easier when there is no need of an immediate assignment to a specific element of the questionnaire so that iQ-AUDIT supports assigning findings in a later step. Furthermore multiple auditors of an audit team are enabled to enter their findings simultaneously and later to import their findings and consolidate them as a team to get actual results.

The final step at the end of or following an audit is to create and publish an audit report. iQ-AUDIT provides a series of tools from a dynamic creation of report contents to the automatic generation of an audit presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Any features of iQ-AUDIT are also available in an autarkic version of the software so that auditors are able to conduct any activities of the auditing process independent of any networks.

Nonconformities and opportunities for improvement found during an audit result in an action process that should correct weaknesses and take part in the continual improvement of systems and processes. The actions are defined, implemented and documented by the audited unit and can be evaluated in iQ-AUDIT at any time. The time line coupled to this process is monitored automatically and system escalations to date violations can be configured in almost any way.

Important Features at a Glance

General

Master data

Audit planning

Audit performance

Action plan

Reports / evaluations (some examples)

Interfaces to Other iQ-BASIS Modules