Developing an appropriate strategy for internal audits is one of the most important initial process improvement tactics for any chemical company.  In this "age of accountability" and "homeland security", identifying who will conduct the audits, how they will be contracted, and determining audit frequency, intensity and scope are important issues. The level of intensity and frequency of internal audits will help determine your audit team's size and deployment needs.

As a chemical company, there is an increasing reality that you conduct more frequent audits. A chemical company or a company who routinely handles chemicals, need more frequent audits and MEL may be able to either augment your existing team, train them, or become your audit solution. This would minimize the total time your own auditor spends on an audit and lessen the distraction to that auditor's day-to-day responsibilities.

Regardless of the auditor pool's size, having a strategy for selecting auditors will go a long way toward guaranteeing the audits' overall effectiveness and, more importantly, the management system's effectiveness and improvement. The auditors must not have responsibility within areas they are auditing. However, there is a strategic advantage to selecting auditors whose departments' processes relate to the areas they are auditing. For instance, a purchasing person could audit shipping and receiving, engineering could audit manufacturing, and manufacturing could audit quality or contract review. Auditing a closely allied department enables auditors to gain in-depth knowledge of these departments' processes, which may later contribute to refining and improving the management system.