VDA 6.3 Process Audit Questionnaire Interpretation Using the Turtle Diagram

The Process to audit comprehends the creation, execution, and customer support for products, subcomponents, materials and services.

The current VDA Part 3, 3rd revision, released in December 2016, is a Process Audit Standard composed of 58 questions, which objective is to evaluate the robustness and capability of a process scoped from a product or service design to its post-delivery activities, for a given family of products or services, and aimed to serve a specific customer.

We can subgroup the questions for a better interpretation of the requirements and faster identification of the risks!

While VDA recommends the usage of the turtle diagram to map the process steps, identify the interfaces, and define the potential risks to be investigated during the audit, the questions are grouped by the Standard’s Process Elements (P2 to P7):

P2: Project management;

P3: Planning the product and process development;

P4: Implementation of the product and process development;

P5: Supplier management;

P6: Process analysis / Production;

P7: Customer support, customer satisfaction, service.

These Process Elements interact each other as per this flow:

SOP (Start of Production)

The VDA 6.3 questionnaire is composed of 58 questions, but the actual number of questions to be answered can be more than 121 as follows:

69 questions if the audit is planned with one manufacturing process step;

95 with two process steps;

121 with three process steps, which is typical.

Who answers all those questions?

The auditees, right? No, the VDA process auditor!

To be able to do it, he/she shall develop the audit plan, define the audit scope, determine the process steps, focus on the processes step’s interactions, formulate open and closed questions to the auditees, and decide between his/her superficial or deep dive investigation on every instance of the audit for which a timeframe for completion was set.

Every set of process element questions can be sub-grouped into the Turtle Diagram slots.

For instance, in the Process Element P4, we can subgroup the questions into:

Inputs, Outputs, What, Who, How and Criteria, as per this turtle diagram:

What does it do for the auditor?

A better interpretation of the requirements and faster identification of the risks!

Every Process Element can be similarly mapped: P2, P3, P5, P6, and P7.

Do you want to see more about it?

Centric One is prepared to help you on anything related to VDA 6.3: Audit, Consultation, Training, and Software. In partnership with ISOQualitas, we developed an exclusive VDA 6.3 spreadsheet to be used as a work tool on the audit planning, conduction, report, action plan and follow up. Contact us for further details.

ABOUT THE AUTOR