Counting down the no-nos during audits: Number 10: Living Pest Control!
As auditors for the pharmaceutical industry, we have the opportunity to visit the most wonderful places as well as the most interesting companies. We are lucky enough to conduct audits all over the world.
Apart from visiting some exemplary companies, we sometimes encounter things we would rather not see. In these last few weeks of 2018, we are counting down the 10 most surprising experiences of 2018 which we truly hope we will not encounter again: some funny, some awful, some just completely unacceptable. And as we are only human after all, some things that happened were through our own making.
Number 10: Living Pest Control!
Pest Control is a serious subject during all quality audits at suppliers of the pharmaceutical industry. Some clients even include it as a mandatory subject in their report templates to ensure it is being reviewed during the audit.
When doing an audit in a North African country, we visited several warehouses which the company was using to store medicinal products, packaging materials, etc. In one of the warehouses we noticed that the rodent traps, like we had seen in other warehouses, were missing. It helped that the locations where we should find them, were indicated on the walls. As we turned around the corner of one of the aisles in the warehouse, we saw why the traps had disappeared: A cat had made its home of the warehouse and was taking care of any potential rodent problem.
Thankfully, the Quality Assurance staff of the company did not need any explanation on the unacceptability of the situation, as they were as appalled as we were.
Next will be number 9: Threatening the auditor
As you can see, after reading this countdown series, we have extensive auditing experience and have encountered almost all possible situations: good and bad.
Would you like to take advantage of that experience and expertise? Contact us here and see how you can benefit.