Effective Tips on How to Develop an AS9100 Internal Audit Checklist

Posted by Caitlin Harry on May 16th, 2019

Internal auditing is a crucial element of aerospace management, and AS9100 internal audit isdesigned to examine the performance of the Aerospace Quality Management System. With this article, we will make your internal auditing a little easier, providing you with important stepson how to develop a checklist for the AS 9100 internal audit.

Listed below are the tips that will help organizations with the auditing process:

Review of process documents

The purpose of auditing is to measure the current performance of your Quality Management System (QMS) against what you have planned, thereforeyour auditing checklist must start with a review plan of the different processes. If you find that there is a documented procedure for examining every process, you must ensure that the procedure includes a method to record the details.

In this context, it important to look after a couple of things, such as:

• Updates and improvements

If any changes take place inside aprocess, you must follow up thatchange and ensure that every related employee is aware of the new process. When a change for a specific problem is made, it is important that the employees are notified about it, to prevent repetition and lost time

Non-modified content

If you have forgotten to update the content of a process, you must review whether the content is still accurate or not. If there have been no updates for an extended period of time, the written document may notaccurately reflect your practices. This would lead to a bad audit score.

• Previous corrective actions

Previous corrective actions are given immense importance in AS 9100 and ISO 27001 internal audit program. An integral part of your checklist will include the checks and modifications reported in your previous corrective actions. 

• Consider AS9100 Rev D requirements

Has your process been documented? There could be a chance that your processes have already been checked if the document has gotten approved. It is also important to verify every so often that your process has not missed the requirements of AS9100. Ensuring that your QMS is aligned with AS 9100 will also be necessary. Internal auditing is the most effective practice for this alignment.

• Analyze process inputs and outputs

A process is an activity that takes one or more inputs and generates outputs. It is possible that you may find an output of one process may becoming the input into another process. In this case, you could face a number of problems arising through the interactions of the processes. Monitoring these interactions is vital when you are completing the internal auditing.

• Research overview process

If you do not have any documentation, then you can develop and monitor an overview of the most useful process.

• Determine the process effectiveness

Indicators should be used to show that the process is running effectively and meeting all the objectives and targets. By measuring the indicator against the expected results, the auditor will be able to tell whether the process has been properly implemented or whetherany further improvement is needed in the procedure to fulfill the requirements.

• Define Samples

In AS 9100 internal audit program, defining the sample is essential. It is not possible for every person involved in the auditing processto examine every piece of data. Therefore,  the audit process should depend on a sample for assessing the processes.Another important point would be to identify a way of choosing your sample

A Final Takeaway

Preparation is the key for a successful audit that is why a checklist is important. .

Before planning for an internal auditing program, you should educate yourself about the standard and its requirements.

Author Bio

Damon Anderson is an ISO auditor who provides an AS9100 internal audit training program. He has expertise in ISO 27001 internal audit programs as well.