A Closer Look at Audit Preparation

Moving Audit Preparation Time from 3 Weeks to 3 Days to 3 Clicks?

What was once the status quo in managing quality is not scalable in today’s economy. Expectations have evolved—have you? Your customers and your supply chain demand more accuracy and visibility. Your audits are more complex and comprehensive, not to mention exhaustive and costly to prepare for and manage.

So, what can you do today?

1. I’m feeling lucky! Press on with your existing quality programs and processes. You make them work harder and push the limits of what you can do with your current quality management system, or lack thereof.

2. Time to buckle down. Examine cost-effective quality system technologies that will allow you to scale and manage the demands you face with more certainty, less risk and more automation – less exhausting.

So you can either move forward “as-is” or look at strategic investments for your internal systems to ensure quality is managed with a deliberate focus on risk reduction. From our standpoint the case is simple, but you have to dig into your business, make the case, and see if the value is worth the effort.

Achieve Audit Success through Qualtrax

Many of our customers have war stories and can recall when they spent much time and devoted entire resources and significant costs to preparing documents and readying their facilities or plants for upcoming audits. One such customer was BORIDE Engineered Abrasives, an ISO 9000 certified manufacturing company. When BORIDE applied for ISO certification, it was looking for a way to effectively manage its ISO documentation requirements. As a “quality first” organization, BORIDE is always well prepared for its ISO 9000 audits, but Qualtrax has been an invaluable tool used to expedite BORIDE’s readiness efforts and speed up the entire audit process.

“The most significant savings that Qualtrax has presented to STR is in resource and human time,” said Josh Grauso with STR-Registrar, LLC

I’m sure you can appreciate the fact that audit preparation is going to be a regular exercise, although, as BORIDE
demonstrates, this process doesn’t have to chew up your team’s time, attention, and focus if the information is more accessible. What was once a 2-3 week preparation process that consumed critical resources that could have been spent on more value-added activities, can now be quickly narrowed into a couple of days soon after implementing a system designed to streamline audit process and compliance readiness. In fact, Robyn Ruth, Technology Support at BORIDE, describes audits as a “no-brainer.”

“We simply set up a view-only [Qualtrax] account for auditors and give them access to our quality system,” Ruth stated. “We passed our very first audit with flying colors. The auditor even called BORIDE the ’poster child’ for how people should run their ISO certified companies.”

Through the use of Qualtrax, you can access and prepare critical information that can drastically reduce the amount of time spent on audits. With full revision history on critical documents and the added ability to track processes and process workflow, administrators can produce reports and quickly understand what’s going on and when – from there it’s simple assign and manage what was done to remedy any corrective actions. You get the point – it’s easier.

Now you’ve tackled a large beast in simplifying your quality system using software tools and automation only to be greeted with a host of additional responsibilities. Now, you have 20 audits a year instead of 5 due to your expanding customer base, regulatory agency oversight and expanding customer and consumer requirements. STR-Registrar, LLC is one Qualtrax customer that deals with this kind of audit strain on a daily basis. Josh Grauso, Quality Program Manager at STR-Registrar commented that three different accreditation bodies reported positive comments around the quality system that STR-R has under Qualtrax.

“Qualtrax is one of the most perfect systems they’ve seen for the management of audit activities and certification decisions,” recalled Grauso. In addition, Grauso stated that “the most significant savings that Qualtrax has presented to STR is in resource and human time.”

The silver lining?

You have put into motion the systems that can be used to draw better reports, shortening the gap that existed in information availability and have trained your staff to make the technology “work for them.”

Carola Bousserghine, Quality Assurance Manager at Polymer Solutions, Inc., reflected on the flexibility of the software when she said, “I would highly recommend Qualtrax to others in our industry just because of the fact that you can customize Qualtrax to accommodate your company…you don’t have to accommodate the software, the software accommodates you.”

And hopefully, like STR, BORIDE, Polymer Solutions, and many others, you too have chosen a vendor that will be
there by your side, helping you adapt to ensure your audits are successful today and in the future. Get ready to manage your audits faster and more efficiently.

Can you transform your audit preparation time from 3 weeks to 3 days to 3 clicks?

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