Hi Greg,

We have another audit coming up June 7th. We had already been certified by the new program. It's a little more stringent than the old one. Check out this link to Quality Management Company. They do the audits for the AISC. There's a lot of good information on the site. If you click on "resources" you can download a sample copy of an internal audit, which is helpful. This site has some of the same information as the AISC site, but has more of it.

http://www.aisc.org/CustomSource/QmcOnline/index.htm

Having the closing meeting in a moment with the auditor! :)
I'll let you know how it went.
John Wright

Had AISC audit feb 1st it was pretty much the same as every other year, good luck

This year was our FULL audit....Well, the auditor gave us a kudos on our shop and organization. We came out with only a couple minor bumps in the road to iron out and was able to correct most of it while he was onsite. <big grin>
Thank goodness that's done! Looking towards next year and fewer bumps in the road.
John Wright

We passed our first audit for one shop last September, to the Standard. Our other shop will be audited in August.
The audit to the Standard was tougher than others I've been through (12 audits and counting). From other comments, I don't know if that was due to the new requirements or the fact that the lead auditor was training another auditor. At any rate, we did well and I felt that we got our money's worth.
Since then our company hired Atema Solutions to conduct a seminar with 28 of our people. (The cost of the seminar was equal to the cost of sending 4 or 5 people to a seminar in another city, and we were able to schedule it for a Fri, Sat, Sun. Salaried people just loved it!)
As a result we learned how we could simplify our program. Just make sure the procedures state the purpose of the procedure, responsibility for review and authorization, responsibility for performance, how to perform, and record required by the procedure. No more, no less.

As far as the actual audit, be prepared to show proof of compliance. When you tell an auditor how you do things, the next statement will be "Show me." Be careful of offering informal documents as proof. If a form has a space not filled out because it didn't matter to you, it won't look good unless (optional) is in the instructions. At the same time, a simple spiral bound pocket notebook can serve to prove maintenance has been done per procedures.

I guess I would sum it all up in saying to keep it thorough but also keep it simple.

Chet Guilford