Although ISO 19011—“Guidelines for auditing management systems” has included language about remote QMS audits since the 2018 revision, this became a reality for many of us in March 2020 with the onset of Covid-19 and the mass lockdowns that ensued. Many of us have been exclusively auditing quality management systems remotely for a year and a half, and without doubt will continue to do so.
In the beginning of the pandemic, there were articles circulating to point to the language of ISO 19011:2018 or blogs from consultants that claimed they were able to teach effective remote-auditing methods to ensure that the results were just as effective as their on-site counterparts. However, now that we are nearly two years into this, I wanted to get some opinions about the actual effectiveness of remote auditing as it stands today.
[…] As we reported earlier in the year, there are many challenges with remote audits and inspections, but most are confident that the practices are here to stay and that the challenges will cause rapid improvement in technologies and methods to make these interactions even more effective than their traditional, onsite only counterparts. Cruse echos this when discussing technical issues with cameras during certain facility inspections and also the potential to collect more and better data stating, […]