Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The Right Approach: Guerilla Tactics to Pass Any QMS Audit, Part 2

Continuing from Part 1, in this column I will cover tactics 5–8. Hopefully, you are finding a number of solid strategies you can apply immediately to improve your audit success.

Guerrilla Tactic 5: QMS Audit Tactical Strategies
Williams’ Law 5: Every time you volunteer something not asked for, you will end up sharing something you don’t want shared.

Don’t Volunteer Anything
Teach all employees to listen to the question and be polite, courteous, and helpful. However, answer the question and only the question. Teach it, preach it, and audit to it!

Develop an Audit Vacation Policy
Consider having no vacations for “key” positions, such as procedure approval signatories and department supervisors/leads, and mandatory vacation for “suspect” employees during an audit.

Get In and Get Out
Job one is to get the auditor out of each department as quickly as possible. Every manager, supervisor, and operator must be proficient at this; be efficient, informative, polite, and professional. Further, employees must be comfortable dealing with auditors. Also, practice the “15-second time-to-retrieval” rule. Within 15 seconds, any operator should be able to physically secure the procedure, find the answer in the procedure, and provide proof of operation (completed form, history, log, etc.).

Guerrilla Tactic 6: Train, Train, and Train Some More
Williams’ Law 6: If an auditor waits longer than 15 seconds for a response, they will wander around and invariably find something you don’t want found.

Don’t focus on procedural memorization; the key is an ability to quickly retrieve information from the procedure. Utilize a Certified Operator Program, have simple training records, and use written tests that demonstrate understanding and competence and require annual recertification.

Make training status visible. It should be easy to verify that an auditee is trained and certified to a task being performed (badge, color coding, training matrix card, etc.). Clearly identify temps and trainees; auditors will typically not question these employees.

Create Improvement Teams

Primary responsibilities of these teams would include:

• Pursuing continuous improvement
• Being a procedure and process owner
• Being departmental ISO champions and watchdogs
• Being a powerful ISO support system
• Being quality system “buy-in” facilitators
• Fostering a “sense of ownership”
• Enforcing and complying with the system

Be creative in naming your team. For example:

• PIT Crew (Product Improvement Team)
• CIT (Continuous Improvement Team)
• Bulldog Brigade
• Tiger Team

Common Sense Process Control

Only control “critical” processes and be operator-centric—not engineering-centric. There should be operator-level responsibility; train those who actually do the work.

Guerrilla Tactic 7: MBWA
Williams’ Law 7: You can’t manage from your office, and if you don’t constantly monitor the pulse on the shop floor, it is easy to lose control.

Tom Peters, the author of the “Excellence” series of books and one of my favorite management consultants, coined the phrase “management by walking around,” or MBWA. This is another of those concepts that seem so obvious, but how many of us actually do this? This is a rhetorical question, but really, how often do you go out on the shop floor and just observe what is going on? I don’t mean tracking down orders and making sure people are working, but how does the facility look? Do the workers look happy? What are they saying? Are we working smart or overcompensating by working hard? What would I think if I were the customer? You can’t answer these questions by sitting in your office.

Guerrilla Tactic 8: Learned Behaviors
Williams’ Law 8: You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

Many of the concepts discussed in this series may seem unconventional and may not come naturally. That is to be expected, but the good news is that they are easily learned with practice, diligence, and continuous positive reinforcement. A learned behavior is a behavior observed by someone that they find beneficial to them in some way. There’s a motivating factor behind it. Unlike innate behavior, a learned behavior is one that you make a conscious decision to learn; in other words, nurture rather than nature.

Think about writing. When you first began to learn to write, it required constant thought and attention. Now, when you jot down a note, it is automatic or second nature. That is how all learned behaviors are developed. The following list is a way to initiate and reinforce the learned behaviors that will be required to foster the culture needed to get the full benefits out of all the concepts, techniques, and methodologies discussed throughout this series.

Prepare all employees much as a trial lawyer would prepare a witness, including:

• Coaching responses
• Not just answer, but the tone, eye contact, politeness, etc.
• Confidence (a learned behavior)

• Scripting for common questions
• Where is your procedure?
• How do I know you are trained to do this operation?
• Where are your training records located?

• Memorizing the quality policy and battle cry
• Teach and practice with internal audits and rallies
• Query employees with every interaction

• Helping operators to understand procedures (this is a MUST)
• Don’t teach memorization
• Teach content and structure
• Know the importance of standardized sections
• Know where to find answers
• Operator certification: open-book test

• Training operators not to guess at auditor questions
• Teach “Please let me refer to my procedure”
• Supervisor or ISO rep can assist in guiding employee to correct answer

• Practicing response time to the 15-second rule

You must be comfortable with 100% of employees’ abilities to deal with auditors/customers. Condition employees through internal audits, and practice, practice, practice. Cheating is not acceptable; facilitate applied learning because character and integrity are everything.

Conclusion

It is my desire that as we work through the various strategies, techniques, and tactics presented throughout this series, you will appreciate that these are tried-and-true, practical applications and lessons learned over the course of my career that I hope you will find some value in.

This column appeared in the May 2020 issue of PCB007 Magazine.