Abstract

The internal audit is one of a quality manager’s the most powerful tools, yet it is underused and frequently under-appreciated. One reason is that it is difficult to show that the audit covers all of the requirements of the relevant quality management system standard. Another problem is that it is hard to convince management of the urgency of newly discovered issues. Both of these problems can be solved by an approach called “auditing for impact” that ties audit findings to bottom-line profits that management can easily understand. The audit for impact can help a company achieve a true process-based auditing approach as envisioned by the revision to ISO 9001.