An audit for an enterprise is like an X–ray for a person - with its help, both the strengths and weaknesses of the company are revealed. To detect them, you need special skills that a modern auditor has. The head of aerospace certification projects - the leading auditor of RT-Techpriemka JSC, Alexander Buzov, told about what kind of auditor he is, the auditor of the XXI century.
− Alexander, please tell us who the auditor is?
– Our specialty is often confused with financiers, since auditors are financial, but they have nothing to do with our field of activity – certification. Certification bodies are divided into two main types – product certification bodies and management system certification bodies. RT-Techpriemka is engaged in the second type of activity. The management systems themselves are also multifaceted: there is a quality management system, an environmental management system, a labor protection management system, etc. I am engaged in the control of the quality management system of aviation enterprises for compliance with the requirements of the EN 9100:2018 standard. Certification according to this standard can be carried out only by those organizations that are accredited by international bodies that are part of the international aerospace quality group, or have the status of official partners. Thus, the auditor is the one who checks the organization for compliance with the audit criteria.
– How to get into the profession? What kind of education is needed?
– There are two ways to become an auditor. The most obvious way is to go to a university with a degree in Quality Management. You will be trained in statistical methods, introduced to quality management tools, and you will receive the theoretical basis of the profession. Then, most likely, you will be offered a job at the enterprise, in the quality management service. If you want to go to work with a certification body with this specialty, then it's a little more complicated here. So, each auditor has a technical area of certification, that is, he can check only those enterprises that are included in this area. It is described by groups of codes that are issued to the auditor based on his work experience and education. For example, after graduating from a university with a degree in Quality Management, where technical disciplines are not taught, you will receive a small technical area of certification, and your value as an auditor will be small.
The second way is to get a technical education, preferably engineering. Then start a career in the specialty. For example, for many years after graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute, I myself worked as a design engineer in the direction of aircraft construction at FSUE TsAGI, then continued my career at Sukhoi Civil Aircraft JSC. And after choosing the specialty of an auditor, my technical field of certification was formed based on education and practical experience, which allowed me to become an expert in a wide field of certification in the future.
My opinion is that if you want to work at an enterprise, then a specialized education is enough, and if your goal is to work in a certification body, then you should choose a technical specialty at a university and then go to work at an enterprise as a technologist, and, in the future, retrain as an auditor. To do this, you need to take three-week courses and an internship, after which you can be certified for this profession.
− What are the most important skills and abilities of an auditor?
– Of course, technical knowledge is the most important because each auditor must be well versed in the area where he conducts the audit in order to communicate with representatives of organizations in one technical language that is understandable to them and be able to evaluate all production processes. He must understand not only one specific area, but also all production processes, as well as regulatory documentation.
Speaking about personal qualities, I will note, first of all, sociability. The auditor needs to build a trusting relationship in order to get the maximum amount of useful information from the interviewees and be able to prevent potential conflict situations during the audit. His task is to correctly explain what he needs to check, and, in case of inconsistencies, to agree on an action plan to eliminate inconsistencies. Another important quality of an auditor is observation. During the audit, he must collect the necessary amount of objective evidence to make a conclusion about the organization's compliance with the requirements of the declared standard.
– Tell us, how is the audit going?
– We always adapt to the organization's schedule, especially when we conduct audits in various regions of the country. For example, when conducting an audit in a city as far from Moscow as Vladivostok, you need to take into account a large time difference. So, at the time of remote inspections, I had to work late in the evening and at night.
We begin any audit by providing the staff and management of the organization with complete information about the future audit: its goals, criteria and the composition of the audit team. Then we study the divisions of the enterprise and get acquainted with its employees. At the end of each day, our employees hold a coordination meeting of auditors with representatives of the organization's quality service to summarize the work for the day. At the end of the entire audit, its results are provided to the company's management with an explanation of the identified inconsistencies.
Our main task is not to find as many inconsistencies as possible, but to confirm that the company's activities meet the requirements of the stated standards. If we understand that any production process can be optimized, then we form a list of recommendations on how to improve the work of the enterprise. We try to share our experience based on the inspections of other similar organizations.
– Why do organizations need audits?
– If we approach it from the formal side, then for certain organizations, for example, the military-industrial complex, audits are required by law, that is, a certificate is required for the operation of the enterprise, which is issued only after successful completion of the audit.
If the company is certified to the EN 9100 standard, then it most likely seeks to improve its image in the market. By receiving this certificate, the company enters the international database of aerospace suppliers, being in which is considered a great achievement.
Any audit should bring some added value. So, by paying money for verification, it is assumed that the organization will receive a certain positive effect. In our case, it consists in eliminating certain faulty defects, inconsistencies. The elimination of these points in the future will help to increase the efficiency of the enterprise and its competitiveness.
– How many audits are on your account?
– Last year I conducted about 36 audits. Each of them lasted from one to two weeks. The past year has been quite busy, but in general I have been working in this field not so long ago – only ten years. Therefore, if you count it, it turns out that I have conducted over 300 audits for the entire time of my professional activity.
– How do you see the development of certification of management systems in Russia?
– It seems to me that the audit model, which we have now tested and configured according to the foreign EN 9100 principle, has proven itself quite well in the Russian market. But, unfortunately, today there is no information resource that would help to trace all the work of the auditor, to check how the audit took place, which certification body carried it out. All this can be done by creating a single information space. Following the example of our foreign colleagues, it is necessary to create a database where anyone could register and see all certified organizations, their certificates, and understand what companies are doing. If you plan to make your supplier from this organization in the future, then you would be able to request a full audit report from them. And then, having received it, it would be possible directly through the computer to see how the audit took place and what inconsistencies were found, as well as to study the recommendations of the audit group. In addition, the system would provide a list of certified auditors, accredited certification bodies and educational organizations conducting professional training. That is, it would be possible to get all the information available without any barriers in one window, and thus the credibility of the issued certificates would increase by increasing the transparency and traceability of the certification procedure.