Using Audit Results to Drive Improvement

Audit results are an invaluable source of process improvement opportunities and generally uncover two different categories of intelligence: 1. People not doing things they should, and 2. People doing things they shouldn’t.

People not doing things they should

This is the case where the current procedures, work instructions and other formal approved documents reflect best practices but are not being followed. There are a lot of possible causes for this common situation, but the most likely one is that the organization lacks a comprehensive training program.

People doing things they shouldn’t

This is the case where the current procedures, work instructions and other formal approved documents are being followed, but they do not reflect best practices. Again, many potential reasons, however the overwhelming cause that I find is that the department employees (the real process experts) were not actively engaged in developing the processes. The collateral benefits of this process development method are that the employee ownership of how things are done tends to lead to self-imposed compliance.

The bottom-line is that both of these situations provide low-hanging process improvement fruit that are easy to fix and directly improve efficiency, quality and profits.