Beacon Quality Blog

Companies that implement a layered process audit (LPA) system must account for a wide variety of questions. Which process areas will you audit?  How often will you audit them? What will the process audits cover? How will you take action when you find non-conformances?

At the heart of these high-frequency checks, however, are the questions you include in your actual audit checklists to verify processes are being done right. We’ve discussed strategies for writing LPA questions, such as providing context on why and how to check individual items. Today, we’re examining 7 types of questions to consider for your process audit checklists, including:

• Safety
• Materials
• Motions
• Workstation design
• Process for reporting issues
• Documentation
• Follow-up

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This layered process audit checklist template is intended to help automotive and aerospace suppliers get started with LPAs. Note that this LPA checklist is a starting point for ideas, and should be customized to the specific department, work area and process being audited.

As you create your own LPA checklist, try to limit it to 10 questions that take no longer than 10 minutes to answer. Questions should be:

• Objective: Use yes or no questions where yes means pass and no triggers mitigation or corrective action.
• Specific: Avoid terms like “properly” or “correctly.”
• Concise: People who are not process experts should be able to easily answer the questions.

 The LPA checklist is an editable Excel spreadsheet that you can alter to your specific needs. Directly download, and start using today! Note: Make sure to ‘scale to 1 page’ when printing in ‘landscape’ format for ease of use.

 

 

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Ask any meeting of automotive quality professionals, and the majority could tell you what a layered process audit (LPA) is. In aerospace, that number is smaller but growing. Aerospace suppliers and OEMs are just starting to realize the kind of transformation they can achieve by implementing an LPA program.

LPAs are high-frequency process audits that are helping aerospace companies dramatically reduce defects, quality costs and customer complaints. Organizations thinking about starting LPAs first need to understand how these unique process audits work, and what to expect during the implementation process.

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