Luz,
We audit our suppliers at work and our main goal is the same - audits completed. Some other areas we have been discussing to track are;

1. Completion statistics - did we complete our audits on time and did the supplier meet their actions dates for corrective action.
2. Although not an official goal yet, I have been evaluating how we would track audit effectiveness. Plotting audit dates along a time line of delivery performance and/or quality performance can show if the audit you performed impacted the suppliers performance.
3. If you are performing compliance audits that have to be completed at certain times of the year, you could track if these were completed on time. An example would be a monthly safety or environmental audit completed on time.

Hope this helps your creative thoughts.

@Luz Tatiana Miranda

We used to use “audits completed compared to audits planned“ and have since tried using “No Major observations” as a way to measure effectiveness a bit closer. I think simply “audits completed” is a better choice.

We started to feel it was too easy to meet the goal and that we weren’t gaining anything valuable from the audit KPI. But now we have two straight quarters with major observations that don’t look great. The audits themselves address these issues with CAPAs and we have an effectiveness check program so these really don’t require another level of follow up. And there really isn’t a way to improve this metric as its individual systems being checked. In the end, an effective audit system is one that is routinely being performed in conjunction with other systems (ie CAPAs) and also contains a look back on previous audits in that area. Therefore, audits completed is a very good KPI!

I hope this helps. We learned this lesson the hard way.

Good Morning.
Thanks for your message.
In our experiencie, we have learned that internal audits helps identified opportunities and risks in the performance of the QMS process, beyond the performance metric, w e have focused on strenghening the QMS process, is not easy task, but we are doing it.
Best Regards
Luis G Castro

@Luz Tatiana Miranda
Good morning, I love the ideas being generated here. I know some clients use a scoring system for the audits (Yes get “x” points, No get 0 points, OFI/OBS get "y" points), and use the trends from those audit scores to determine the process effectiveness. For the clients that use it, they like it and it works for them, maybe something similar could work for you? It may take some trial and error.

@Susan Gorveatte Thank you very much, Susan!

@Jammie Graves Thanks a lot!

@Stephen McKenna Great points, thank you!

@Luis Castro Thanks!

@Susan Gorveatte

I love the sound of that Susan. Could you explain it a little further? What is OBS/OFI and how does that get scored?

@Stephen McKenna: OBS Observations OFI Opportunity for Improvement - I use these acronyms to explain things that I am not 100% comfortable with but are not yet problems (but could be if left unchecked). Not an NC yet, but they are on my watch list. So Accept gets 5 oints OBS/OFI gets 2 points N get 0 points. add them up.

Add up the total number of questions (possible total score of tota l number of question x 5 points), add their score and thats the %. Track the %s year over year for process efficiency.

Example:

Scoring:

Acceptable = 5 pts 43 x 5 = 215

Nonconformance = 0 pts 0 x 0 = 0

Observations = 2 pts 6 x 2 = 12

Improvement NA not scored

TOTAL POSSIBLE SCORE 49 questions (@5points each) = 227/245 = 93%

Hopefully that helps, reach out anytime, susan@gorveatteconsulting.com

@Susan Gorveatte

I love the sound of that Susan. Could you explain it a little further? What is OBS/OFI and how does that get scored?

Hi, Audit compliance (planned vs actual), Audit findings vs Audit finding closed, # of repeated findings can be some of the metrics

@Luz Tatiana Miranda happy holidays! You can also track submission timelines of the completed audits. # of audits with no CAPAs. # of audits w/CAPAs and also if they were on time or not.

hope this helps.

@Luz Tatiana Miranda
Two metrics I like are the audits booked vs performed that you had mentioned and timeliness of addressing findings/closing audits.

If the metric is a KPI and is directed at internal audits, then I try to stay away from anything where findings="bad". We want our internal audit programs to be proactively identifying issues. Through that lens, having some findings is more likely an indicator of a healthy audit program rather than an unhealthy process/QMS/etc…

@Susan Gorveatte

Thank you so much for sharing this, Susan.

@Luz Tatiana Miranda

Great question!

We went through ‘Audits planned’ vs ‘Audit performed’. Its a good indicator for scalability. Later we also added “Responsiveness to Audit findings” within is certain time frame and performance of supplier after audit as indicators towards success.

Hope the above is helpful.

Sincerely, Chai