AUDITORIA CONTíNUA: UMA PESQUISA-A O RETROSPECTIVA

This work proposes a tool, called continuous audit, whose objective is to improve the internalaudit process through the registration of the quality management system (QMS) nonconformities basedin ISO 9001 standard in real time and to increase the employees’ participation in the process of QMSevaluation. This tool was developed starting from the combination among visual management, CEDACand quality audit. This work relates, through a retrospective action-research in a thermal products company,a research made 10 years ago that results in a dissertation. The verification of its adequateness shows thata reduction of the number of nonconformities of the analyzed requirements was obtained. The researchallowed concluding that the proposal tool support a larger employees’ participation in the evaluation andimprovement of QMS and that it beholds the features of a communication instrument based on visualmanagement.