Professional supplier audits: How to make it work

Success in the audit process depends largely on the skills of the person conducting the audit. To achieve maximum impact as a supplier auditor, the following approach and skills need to be developed (Figure 1):

Focused planning

An audit is ideally carried out on the basis of a mandate and a systematic approach. The topics of the audit assignment must be agreed in advance with the client and the audit team. This is important in order to achieve an acceptable audit result and its benefits.

In order for this to be implemented, the following points in the planning and in the audit assignment have proven to be exemplary:

Planning

• Who is my client? Agree the content, objectives and expectations with the client and the audit team beforehand.
• What information is relevant to understand the organization? For example, assess relevance of specific frameworks and interested parties.
• Which relevant competencies should be present in the team? Only select team members who have something to contribute, e.g. experts from the areas of quality, development, purchasing.
• What are the identified risks of this audit? Gather relevant information from your internal knowledge repository for product and process requirements. Then compare the answers received with the existing requirements.
• Which supply chains are relevant? Audit relevant supply chains to gain full process chain visibility.
• What personal protective equipment is required? Ask in advance about the necessary protective equipment. Always take your personal protective equipment (safety shoes, safety goggles and hearing protection) with you to protect yourself from possible hazards.

Audit engagement

• Audit objective - what does the audit objective contribute to? For example, evaluate process description
• Audit criteria - what is the basis for the audit and what requirements should be met? For example, process description, test specification, drawing, audit questions
• Audit type - which area will be audited?
• Audit organization: How does the audit best achieve its goal? At what point does it make sense to obtain a meaningful sample in practice?
• Benefits: Improvement of risk minimization in the process flow

Objective Implementation

To make the audit efficient and effective, you should use the Pareto principle or the 20/80 rule. With 20% focus on questions, you generate 80% of results in the form of answers (Figure 2). The auditor asks open-ended questions and assesses them objectively on the spot.

Be sure to use open-ended W questions in your questions to give the interviewer enough leeway in answering. Some examples:

• How do you make sure that ...?
• Which solution do you prefer?
• What should we change to achieve the requirement ...?
• What possible solutions do you already know?
• Which of these can
• How can we support you?

If you want your question to elicit a decision, i.e., a yes or no answer, be sure to use closed-ended questions. For example, "Can you imagine a direct and open manner in the audit?"

Every observation or deviation that you obtain through the application of the Pareto principle should be documented on site and discussed with the auditee. This will also help you to achieve the necessary acceptance.

The secret lies in listening attentively

Part of communicating successfully is actively listening. Some examples:

• Keep eye contact. Look, smile, listen and talk little.
• Do not lecture, convey impulses and ideas.
• Open posture. Stand or sit frontally and straight towards your counterpart. Head up, shoulders back.
• Be sure to ask if something was not understood correctly, e.g.: "If I understood you correctly, then ..."
• Always remain poised, polite, humorous and friendly throughout the audit.
• Be appreciative. Be aware of the strengths of the auditees. Give feedback in a situational, authentic and joyful way.
• You will see: Your acceptance as an auditor will increase immediately.

Target-oriented follow-up

Try to easily and quickly conduct a timely follow-up of the audit. To do this, take your audit notes that you made during the audit and formulate them in the form of a report. You can also explain bullet point type bullet points. Use pictures for audit evidence, if possible and with prior permission from the auditee. Pictures best describe what was seen. Prepare a report to be given to all participants no later than three days after the audit.

It is important that you record the findings (potential for improvement or deviations) in the list of measures. The measures required for this should not be defined by you as the auditor, but exclusively by the auditee. This is intended, on the one hand, to address the potential for improvement or the deviation and, on the other hand, to ensure the necessary acceptance of the measures to be taken.

Ask for a person responsible for their implementation and realistic deadlines. In order to determine the effect of the audit, a performance review, if necessary on site, is beneficial for the timely completion of measures.