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 ANALYSIS OF THE THEME AUDIT OFQUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN

EMERALD, SCIELO, SCIENCE DIRECTAND SPRINGER DATABASES

Paulo Henrique Paulista (UNIFEI) paulohpeca@yahoo.com.br

João Batista Turrioni (UNIFEI)turrioni@unifei.edu.br

 More and more companies are implementing a quality management systemto improve the quality of their product to the customer. To assess a quality

management system, companies perform audits their systems, so there are

some researches about this topic. This article aims to review the searches

that have been made about audit of quality management system, analyzing

only articles published by Emerald, SciELO, Science Direct and Springer

databases. A search in those databases was carried out using the words

“quality audit” in different ways in the fields of search. 20.67% of the

articles found related to the area of quality, but only 18 articles dealing

specifically with audit and 16 articles were analyzed.

Palavras-chaves: Audit, Quality, Quality management system

XV INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRIAL

ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT The Industrial Engineering and the Sustainable Development: Integrating Technology and Management. 

Salvador, BA, Brazil, 06 to 09 October - 2009 

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1. Introduction

The concept of quality has been evolved since its introduction. The changes which occurred in

the quality and productivity areas, last decade, were extremely relevant. The reasons for thesechanges were the heavy competition among companies, both in their own countries and abroad;and the fall of trade barriers when the big commercial blocks began to emerge due to theconsolidation of the quality of products and services as a key factor for the survival of companies.Consumers began to demand more quality in products and services by a lower price and theiropinion became crucial (Pinto et al., 2008).

In the mid-80s, it was believed that the quality management brought a certain element offashions. According to Foster and Jonker (2007), the quality prospect was in products, andcompanies were targeted for production. From the 90s, the quality aspects such as qualitymanagement began to be studied deeply. The perspective of quality is now oriented to processes.

The quality approach in companies passed through various phases ranging from inspection tocontrol, warranty and quality management (Garvin, 1992).

 Nowadays, it is believed that the practices based on quality management are fundamental andessential to effective management and competitive survival of companies.

Singh and Smith (2006) believe that the quality management has three dominant approaches:

−  Based conceptual: promoted by several scholars and practitioners;

−  For prizes: which includes several quality awards and awards of excellence in business;

−  On standards: in which ISO 9001 is the one that has more emphasis.

As the purpose of this article refers to the quality audit, ISO 9001, based conceptual and for prizes approaches were not analyzed.

Since ISO 9000 series was created in 1987 by the International Organization for Standardization(ISO), the norms have been accepted, widely, by many organizations, regardless of their size or products (Magd et al., 2003; Magd, 2006; Naser et al., 2004; Saraiva and Duatre, 2003).Researches on the effects of implementing ISO 9001 have been extensively reported, and some papers bring important benefits, such as: improvement of quality awareness and customersatisfaction (Cebeci and Beskese, 2002; Quazi et al., 2002), reduction of waste and customercomplaints (Dwyer, 2002; Ruzevicius et al., 2004), standardization of work procedures andimprovement in communication (Heras et al., 2002), as well as enlargement of market shares(Arauz and Suzuki, 2004; Martínez-Costa and Martínez-Lorente, 2003).

According to THE ISO SURVEY (2007), there are 951,486 certified companies in the world in175 countries. From 2003 to 2007, the growth in the number of certified companies was 91.1%,as shown on the graph represented in Graphic 1. These data show that ISO certification has beenconsidered increasingly important for organizations

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Source: Inspired on The ISO Survey, 2007Graphic 1 – Number of companies certified by ISO 9001 from 2003 to 2007

The audits are part of the quality management system and have the task of evaluating thesesystems of each company.

Auditors who visit the company or a sector of the same and based on their observations and notesconduct the audits periodically, they assess whether the company is in accordance with thestandard or not. The objective of implementing the quality management system is theimplementation of quality policy provided for the organization. These policies may be, forexample, quality assurance of products, customer satisfaction, continuous improvement and

others (ISO, 2008).

Quality auditing as a methodology for assessing the performance of the system, product and/or process against the requirements set, has shown substantial growth in their use in the world inrecent years. This is largely due to the increase in the number of organizations certified by ISO9001 (KARAPETROVIC and WILLBORN, 2002).

Quality audits are not only required to obtain ISO 9001 certification, but also to support programsfor continuous improvement and total quality management (RAJENDRAN and DEVADASAN,2005).

The aims of this article are verify some searches which were carried out using the theme qualityauditing, emphasizing the work that discuss its process or procedure. Then, a search in fourdatabases, which are in the portal journals of CAPES, was done. The databases examined wereEmerald, SciELO, Science Direct and Springer.

2. Quality Management System

According to ISO 9000 (2005), a management system is a system to establish policy andobjectives, and to achieve these goals. A quality system is the organizational structure,responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources for implementation of quality management(ISO 9001, 2008).

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A quality system is a basis for quality assurance in an organization that will have an improvementin processes and products. The quality system is an establishment of processes that workharmoniously, using various resources to implement goals of quality, i.e. an interaction ofresources, materials and information.

According to ISO 9000 (2005), the quality management system is a management system to directand control an organization with regard to quality. ISO 9001 (2008) says that the adoption of aquality management system should be a strategic decision of an organization. Various needs,specific objectives, products provided, processes employed, the size and structure of theorganization influence the design and implementation of a quality management system of anorganization.

3. Audit of Management Quality System

3.1. Concept of Audit

According to ISO 19011 (2002), audit is a systematic, documented, and independent process to

obtain audit evidence (records, presentation of facts or other information) and evaluate themobjectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria (set policies, procedures orrequirements) are fulfilled.

The audit process is an analyze of some documents, records, presentation of facts or otherinformation and then it compares them with a standard or pre-set requirement.

There are some needs for an assessment of the adequacy and effectiveness of measures taken toachieve the goals described (MILLS, 1993). Mills (1993) declares that the audit is concernedwith system performance, area or function being audited.

According to Mills (1993) and ISO 9000 (2005), quality auditing is a systematic and independentexamination to determine whether the activities of quality and their results are in accordance with

what was planed, and if their implementation is efficient and suitable for achieve the goalsdescribed.

Audits are used to determine what level the requirements of the quality management system have been fulfilled. The findings of the audit are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the qualitymanagement system and to identify opportunities for improvement (ISO 9000, 2005).

3.2. Types of audits

There are two types of audit, internal and external.

Internal audits, sometimes called first-party audits, are conducted by, or on behalf of, theorganization itself for management review and other internal purposes, and may form the basis

for an organization's self-declaration of conformity. In many cases, particularly in smallerorganizations, independence can be demonstrated by the freedom from responsibility for theactivity being audited (ISO 19011, 2002, p. 1).

External audits include those generally termed second- and third-party audits. Second-partyaudits are conducted by parties having an interest in the organization, such as customers, or byother persons on their behalf. Third-party audits are conducted by external, independent auditingorganizations, such as those providing registration or certification of conformity to therequirements of ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 (ISO 19011, 2002, p. 2).

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ISO 19011 (2002, p. 2) says that when a quality management system and an environmentalmanagement system are audited together, this is termed a combined audit.

Mills (1993) states that there are several types of audit quality:

−  Audit of quality program: This type of audit aims to achieve the desired level of quality,

 based on: the management wants, market, national and international standards of quality,standards of quality of purchase by customers; good manufacturing, and product specificrequirements. This audit is to compare the documents to the existing policy, quality manual, procedures, work instructions and forms / records to a standard defined by the customer;

−  Audit of the quality system: The complete program of quality of the operational activities ofthe implementation, i.e. the phases of planning, implementation, measurement and correctioncycle management;

−  Audit of quality management: Usually confused with the audit of the quality system, but it isactually restricted to managerial aspects of the quality system;

− Audit of quality product: It assesses the QMS details applied to a specific product. It can beconsidered as a re-inspection of the final product, just by checking if the QMS meet thestandards or specifications that refer to the product. The results can be obtained by testing andinspection.

−  Audit of quality process: It investigates the process and quality system elements, that is,evaluate the system against the standards or specifications of the reference process;

−  Audit of quality service: In this audit there is the capacity of those responsible for thedecisions that guide the organization to achieve the objectives of quality;

−  Audit for evaluation and improvement of the quality system: This type of audit is required bythe market to demonstrate an improvement in performance or image quality of the company.

Environmental audit verifies that the environmental system of the organization complies with theenvironmental standards, highlighting the ISO 1400.

The audit process applied in the area of occupational health and safety (OHS) is similar to thatadopted for the areas of quality and environment. Audit of system´s OHS assesses to what degreethe system of the organization complies the requirements of the standard OHSAS 18001.

4. The research

Many authors have been studying about audit. This statement could be verified by a search insome databases which are available on the portal of CAPES (Coordination of Improvement ofHigher Education), which has some journals. Table 1 shows the number of articles found on thatwebsite and the amount that was available for download.

Databases Found AvailableEmerald 377 294SciELO 0 0Science Direct 40 34Springer 212 88

Table 1: Researched articles in journals portal

In the database of Emerald, the author carried out two different searches. The first with the term

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"quality audit" with the option to search in the whole article, except in full text, it was obtained64 articles found. The second way was a search with the term "audit" in a field and another with"quality", both with the option to search in the whole article, except in full text, and the resultshowed 377 articles found. Then there was the catch of the papers, according to the second way,

which is more comprehensive than the first.

The 294 papers available for capture in the portal journals, found in the database of EMERALD,were analyzed and classified according to the area in which the article was about. Table 2 showsthe distribution of how the articles were classified.

Area QuantityEnvironmental 21Accounting or Finance 63Education 13Medical or Health 86Quality 78

Others 33Table 2: Distribution of articles in the Emerald classified by area

The author did not find any articles in the database of SciELO, where the search was done withthe term quality audit.

In the database of Science Direct, a search was done with the option to search in the summary,title and keywords in the article about the term "audit" in a field and "quality" in another, andrestricted the search to only the area of engineering. The result of the search presented 40 papers,of which only 34 were available for capture. Those articles were classified, as seen in Table 3.

Area Quantity

Environmental 9Energy 7Medical or Health 4Quality 5Others 9

Table 3: Distribution of articles in the Science Direct classified by area

Finally, the last database searched was Springer. There were two kinds of search in this database.The first was to search by title with the term "quality audit", which resulted in 23 articles found.The second search was done by summary using the term "quality audit", which had 212 articles.The articles of the second search were examined, because it contained the entire first search andmore different others. The classification of the articles can be seen in Table 4.

Area QuantityEnvironmental 8Accounting or Finance 10Education 4Medical or Health 40Quality 3Others 23

Table 4: Distribution of articles in the Springer classified by area

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Graphic 2 shows the quantity of articles, in percentage, which were done download. Thosearticles are classified by area.

Graphic 2 – Percentage of articles classified by area

5. Results – analysis of articles

The articles found in the area of quality were 86. Those 86 articles were classified according tothe topic of each case, as shown in Table 5.

DatabaseTopics

EMERALD SCIENCEDIRECT SPRINGER Total

Accreditation 2 0 0 2Audit 17 1 0 18Quality Tools 15 0 0 15Quality Assurance 7 3 0 10Quality Management 17 0 1 18ISO 9001 13 1 2 16Quality Improvement 3 0 0 3Services 4 0 0 4

Total 78 5 3 87

Table 5: Distribution of Quality Articles classified by topic

Excluded are two of the 18 articles that deal on audit because they are old and refer to ISO10011, which is the old standard on quality auditing. Thus, the 16 articles, which referspecifically to audit, will be briefly explained.

Gardner (1997) says that ISO 9000 should help an organization to establish a new perspective tothe audit, particularly with the administration of audits. Before ISO 9000, the administration ofthe audit process was often single and usually applied to a single program or an area of interest.

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With ISO 9000, the audit process is recognized as organizational in nature, integrated with themain methods of validation, helping to assess and to determine the effectiveness of the qualitysystem throughout the organization.

Karapetrovic and Willborn (1998) proposed the harmonization and integration of managementsystem audits. They presented a brief history of the standard audit and identified the maindifferences to integrate the standards of quality and environmental audit.

Karapetrovic and Willborn (2000a) claim that quality audits are important management tools toassess compliance and effectiveness of quality systems. They are commonly used to improve theoverall performance of companies. The authors present in this article: the concept of qualityauditing using the systems approach; a framework of quality assurance based on the applicationof the 1994 and 2000 versions of ISO 9001 in the audit is made; a clarification regarding theeffectiveness system audit using the concepts of reliability, availability and adequacy of audit; anexplanation of failures, risks and sustainability audit; a conclusion that the managers of the auditshould ensure appropriate levels of quality and effectiveness of the quality auditing.

Karapetrovic and Willborn (2000b) address the main models, concepts, principles and practicesof auditing management system, aiming to improve the coherence and effectiveness of audits ofquality, environmental, financial, security, maintenance, and other types. The concept and principles of quality, environmental, and accounting auditing are compared to the preparation of ageneric definition of audit and a set of basic features of general audit. Then, the authors presentthe common practice audit and an outline of the structure and content of a general audit.

Two methodologies for assessing the performance of quality management systems were studied by Karapetrovic and Willborn (2001). In this study, they compared the principles and practices ofaudit and self-assessments of quality, aiming to examine the compatibility to provide a basis forintegrating the two methodologies.

Karapetrovic (2002) discussed in his work, several ideas for the development of integratedmanagement systems (e.g. quality management systems and the environment together), withsupport of audit methodologies. He suggested a model based on two integrated managementsystems.

Karapetrovic and Willborn (2002) advocate the elimination of one of the traditional audit: theautonomy. The purpose of this disposal is to take the conduct of periodic self-assessments of performance process. Such "self-audits" would be less formal than the quality of audits and moreknown as a self-assessment against business excellence models, aimed at continuous qualityimprovement. They focused on the concept, principles and practices of a self-audit in this article.

Beckmerhagen et al. (2003) propose a method that helps to create an integrated system of

management by means of audits. They said that the audit could provide an excellent basis for theintegration of quality, environmental, occupational health and safety, social responsibilitysystems and other management systems.

Braun and Davis (2003) present a summary of software called computer-assisted audit tools andtechniques (CAATTs) that the auditors can use it to increase efficiency and effectiveness of theaudit. They proposed a study to ascertain the perception of government auditors about CAATTs.The results show that the auditors showed less confidence in their technical skills in the use of

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CAATTs, but they said you need some additional technical training.

 Ni and Karapetrovic (2003) suggested in an article, a model of self-audit to improve the qualitymanagement system (QMS). The model is based on the concepts of self-audits and nano-audits,

which directly contradicts the two classical principles of auditing: the independence and thediscrete nature of the audit process. The general model is presented first, including a descriptionof the underlying concepts (self-audit, milli-audit, audit micro-and nano-audit), then the elementsof the model and their inter-relationships are illustrated. Three specific applications are discussed:update based on patterns of QMS; facilitation of the transition from systems based on businessexcellence, and providing support in the integration of specific functions of management systems.Subsequently, the emphasis is shifted from a real life application of the proposed model in a hightechnology company. We used this model to help make in a company, the transition from ISO9001, version 1994 to version 2000.

Beckmerhagen et at. (2004) studied the effectiveness, reliability and risk audits. They analyzedthe concept of efficiency audit of the quality management system, suggested a list of principles

and criteria to measure, and improved their effectiveness.

Rajendran and Devadasan (2005) did a literature review to explore the status, power, and thefuture of quality audits. Their results showed that the quality audits are not only for theverification of conformity of quality management system with the standard (in this case ISO9001), they stated that audits could be used to practice continual improvement and obtain benchmarks for total quality management.

Elliott, Dawson and Edwards (2007) conducted a study to investigate and understand the reasonswhy the internal audit is often viewed as an activity that adds no value. The article describes themto develop a new model of process and an approach that will improve real and perceived value ofaudit. A questionnaire was sent to auditors and audited by AWE Plc (Atomic Weapons

Establishment), to obtain their views on the effectiveness of audit and quantify their perception ofvalue. The result shows a change in the internal audit, and also that the management of internalauditing is very focused on the program rather than the value resulting from the action forimprovement. The model proposed audit should improve its effectiveness and perceived value, because it has the potential to influence significantly the way the internal and external audit can be realized in the future.

Power and Terziovski (2007) developed a study the aim of which was to optimize non-financialaudits, which require that auditors and their clients gain a greater understanding, responsibilitiesand powers of non-financial auditor. This research uses data obtained from surveys of 126athletes and 400 customers of non-financial audit in Australia to test two propositions on the rolesand requirements of non-financial auditors. The results indicate that auditors are providing non-

financial audit of a style strongly focused on the development of continuous improvement of thequality system of the client and appear to have a desire to fulfill what they believe are therequirements for certified organizations, emphasizing the importance of improving continuousaudit focused. The results also show that customers are organizations in general, seeking a more balanced approach to audit non-financial in terms of compliance and continuous improvement.This evidence suggests that one of the main barriers relate to issues of independence, whichhinders the understanding of the proper role of the auditor (both in the customer’s mind as well asin the auditor's) because they have different interests according to the quality system.

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Abu-Musa (2008) conducted a survey to investigate effects in Arab organizations, the impact ofinformation technology on the activities of internal auditors. The results show that the auditorsneed to strengthen their knowledge and skills about the computer information systems for planning, directing, supervising and reviewing the work.

Green (2008) conducted a study to see whether the repetition can affect the decisions of theauditors. The auditors were subject to multiple answers (some erroneous or not) of an audit toverify that would increase the efficiency of the outcome of the audit when compared with a singleresponse. It is considered that the repetition is effective, but there may be differences in thedecisions of auditors due to the nature and number of explanations considered. The authorsuggests that audit quality could be undermined if the auditors did not consider a wide range ofexplanations, especially when they receive repeated explanations without error.

6. Conclusion

To check whether a company has a good quality management system, it should be audited. The

audit ensures quality, aid in the improvement of internal controls, allows the detection of fraud,increasingly common in corporate environment, and enhances the development of people.Finally, it is a service that contributes greatly to the development of the company.

This article presented a summary analysis of research done on the subject of audit quality in fourdatabases (EMERALD, SciELO, and SPRINGER SCIENCEDIRECT) available on the portal journals of CAPES. This article analyzed 16 articles about quality auditing.

It is possible to see, with the analysis in this article, that the audit issue has been studied a lot. Ithighlights that it found articles that refer to environmental; accounting or finance; education;energy and health auditing, but those other types were not analyzed because the purpose of thearticle referred, only, to quality auditing.

The two following researches are suggested for future work: firstly, a study to examine the othertopics on quality of articles found that mention the word audit, secondly, other research toanalyze the process of auditing using the articles of other areas such as: environmental,accounting or finance, education, energy; and health.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of CAPES and FAPEMIG to prepare this paper.

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