Counting down the no-nos during audits: Number 8: Audit, was that today?
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 8: Audit, was that today?
Thankfully it does not happen very often that we arrive at a company to conduct an audit and the company is truly surprised by our presence. But when it happens, the best approach for an auditee is at least to be honest about it.
We were trying to carry out an audit in Germany and arrived at 8.30 AM for the opening meeting. The company was located at a large industrial complex with site-wide security. The first surprise we had was that we were not expected by security, which is unlike what normally happens at sites like this. Our contact person’s name, the same person who confirmed the audit date by email, was known personally by the security staff, however, and they indicated that, on Tuesdays, he usually worked on another location of the company. Security started calling the site. After about half an hour, security indicated that they had spoken to someone and that we were going to be picked up at the security building.
Well, only half an hour lost……
When the production manager arrived at the security building, he indicated that the audit could not take place because the QA manager had become ill that day. While explaining that we were able to manage without the QA manager, he insisted that that was not going to happen. There was no way that he was going to grant us access to the site. Thus, we left without performing the audit.
Although we cannot prove it, we did not really believe any of the excuses about the sick QA manager. A more decent host would have contacted me beforehand. We have performed audits where we advised QA managers to go home because they were falling ill, and where we had to ensure them we would be able to do the audit without them. We still believe that the QA manager of this particular company just forgot about the audit and was unprepared.
Next will be number 7: Lunch?
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.
Did you like this post: You can find the series HERE
Number 10: Living Pest Control
Number 9: Threatening the auditor