by Chris Devers

Good audit constitutes a good heat-treatment process. An audit conducted to ascertain a certain Heat Treating department is very vital since it sets the standards of that department, at the same time it’s a way of monitoring the standards of the department and keeping the processes at pace with the standard heat-treating procedures.

An audit is also essential in establishing the capabilities of a commercial heat-treating supplier, thus the audit should be specific, goal oriented, formal, and follows the required guidelines.

According to the audit checklist, a heat-treating department should be operated by skilled and competent workers. It is a basic for any operation.

The persons behind the operation should be highly competent, trained, and has capabilities in making sure the heat-treating process is in place. They should also be trained for troubleshooting purposes, and they should know the basic problem solving skills to resolve issues that may arise during the actual operation. Another consideration should be the efficiency of the heat-treating process itself.

It should be establish during the audit that the operation should be equipped with basic and qualified procedures to come up with standard quality. Quality assurance is a must during this process. The audit team as well will be very particular with regards to the workplace. The operations area should be conducive for the operation and during the Heat Treating process.

The audit will also take into account the previous audit and assessment made, and if the previous results reflect the current performance of the heat-treating department. The audit will have specific guidelines that should be met during the audit to make sure that the department still follows what should be the basic processes during the heat-treatment procedure.

If there will be any issues that will arise during the actual audit, a more specific resolution and action plans will be set to improve the issues at hand with the aid of the personnel present during the audit process.

A heat-treating department will be rated “fail” if the department will not reveal the real nature of the processes within the heat-treating operation. There are two aspects taken into account.

First is the quality which constitutes the compliance, form, instructions, and the standards of the heat treatment operation. The other consideration pertains to the aspect of performance. Performance refers to the control, processes and work control, and other basic principles of the heat-treating process. Since most of the time, the audit body look through the last audit made, and makes a reference for the recent audit, they are actually into the improvement and working out on what should be the processes that a department should improve after the last audit.

If by some means, the specific goals were not work out, and the next audit spot the same issues, that is where a department is given a “fail” rating. The Heat Treating operation is not a simple procedure. It requires a lot o skills and standard operating procedures should be mastered to come up with both quality and performance classification. Taking into account the basics of the heat-treating department audits, we will make sure that the department sticks with the basic and realistic goals of the heat-treating department, at the same time delivering a sound and quality performance.