To paraphrase an old axiom: If passing audits were easy, everybody would do it. Aside from showing regulatory compliance, audits can:

• Help companies improve their management structure and reassess operational priorities.
• Identify a clear path to achieving business objectives.
• Provide an inventory of any incidents and isolate problems that stand in the way of more efficient operations.
• Deliver supplier evaluations and valuable customer feedback.

Unfortunately, whether it’s for GFSI certification, the FDA, or a customer-mandate check – failing an audit can be costly. When a company passes an audit, executives celebrate the entire staff, while failure typically falls on the heads of the Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) team. However, those teams can stave off audit failures – and the consequent losses – by learning about and circumventing the most common mistakes.