Definition of the term (“What is an audit?”)

An au­dit checks whe­ther re­qui­re­ments, pro­ces­ses and gui­de­lines com­ply with re­qui­red stan­dards or norms. Due to the high si­gni­fi­can­ce of qua­li­ty, au­dits are of­ten car­ri­ed out as part of a qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment. This dif­fe­ren­tia­tes bet­ween two ty­pes of au­dits wi­thin the sta­tic and dy­na­mic qua­li­ty management.

On the one hand, the­re are au­dits with va­li­da­ting cha­rac­ter wi­thin the sta­tic qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment, which pro­vi­de pro­ofs for the con­trac­tu­al agree­ments and which are only con­duc­ted once. On the other hand, the­re are au­dits ta­king up on de­ve­lo­p­ment trends in the dy­na­mic qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment, which pro­vi­de the ori­gi­na­tors of ch­an­ges with clear feed­back on the ef­fects of the im­ple­men­ted measures.

An au­dit can eit­her be an in­ter­nal au­dit and thus self-eva­lu­ti­on or an ex­ter­nal au­dit. The ex­ter­nal au­dit dif­fers from the in­ter­nal au­dit in that it is a cer­ti­fied pre­re­qui­si­te in qua­li­ty ma­nage­ment and is car­ri­ed out by re­co­g­nis­ed bo­dies. This could for ex­am­p­le re­sult in an of­fi­ci­al certification.

The au­dit trail should also be men­tio­ned in con­nec­tion with the audit.
An au­dit trail is a pro­ce­du­re, which mo­ni­tors the at­tempt­ed and im­ple­men­ted ac­tions of per­sons du­ring a pe­ri­od of time, elec­tro­ni­cal­ly do­cu­men­ting them. Mo­reo­ver, the au­dit trail can also be a tem­po­ral se­quence of ac­tions, sta­tu­s­es and sys­tem sta­tes, which can be re­crea­ted ac­cor­ding to traces such as bookings.