Characteristics of Internal Audits in Improvement of Quality Goals in Calibration Laboratories (Jimmy Pusaka and Budhy Basuki) 91 CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERNAL AUDITS IN IMPROVEMENT OF QUALITY GOALS IN CALIBRATION LABORATORIES Karakteristik Audit Internal dalam Perbaikan Sasaran Mutu di Laboratorium Kalibrasi Jimmy Pusaka and Budhy Basuki Research Center for Metrology, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences Kompleks Puspiptek, Gedung 420, Tangerang Selatan, Banten, Indonesia E-mail: j_pusaka@kim.lipi.go.id Diterima: 16 Februari 2016, Direvisi: 11 Juli 2016, Disetujui: 18 Juli 2016 Abstract The Quality Goals and Internal Audits are two important links in the quality management system. These two interrelated points are in many cases surprisingly not considered as they should be. Quality goals aren’t often subject to internal audits. Similarly with quality goals scarcely describe the improvement of internal audits as a tool to strengthen the quality management system. The fact, recent audit findings found no more than 11 out of 165 findings in 18 accredited calibration laboratories operated on the basis of ISO/IEC 17025 that relates to quality goals. This paper proves no strong correlation between quality goals and internal audit statistically. The importan thing for the improvement of quality goals – internal audits relationship is giving more clarification to clause 4.10 Improvements and add internal audit-based items on the quality goals. Keywords: calibration laboratory, internal audit, quality goals. Abstrak Sasaran Mutu dan Audit Internal merupakan dua bagian penting dalam sistem manajemen mutu. Kedua hal yang berkaitan ini dalam banyak kasus, ternyata tidak dipandang sebagai berkaitan satu sama lain. Sasaran mutu mutu sering tidak menjadi target audit internal. Sama halnya dengan sasaran mutu yang sangat jarang menyinggung peningkatan audit internal sebagai sarana untuk memperkuat sistem manajemen mutu. Fakta penelitian, saat ini temuan audit menunjukkan kurang dari 11 temuan dari 165 temuan pada 18 laboratorium kalibrasi terakreditasi yang cara kerjanya berdasarkan ISO/IEC 17025 yang terkait dengan sasaran mutu. Makalah ini membuktikan tidak cukup kuatnya kaitan antara sasaran mutu dan audit internal secara statistik. Hal yang penting untuk perbaikan hubungan sasaran mutu – audit internal adalah memberikan klarifikasi pada klausul 4.10 Peningkatan, dan menambah butir-butir terkait audit internal pada sasaran mutu. Kata kunci: laboratorium kalibrasi, audit internal, sasaran mutu. 1. INTRODUCTION Internal audit is an examination of a matter (work unit, organization, laboratory, etc.) by an expert employed by the same employer. Some consider internal audits as more important compared to external assessments (Arena, 2013; Achua et.al., 2014; Dănescu et.al., 2014; International Atomic Energy Agency, 2009; & Saidin et.al., 2014) from time flexibility, information disclosure, and obviously low cost. External assessments limited to one or a few consecutive days, internal audits might be accomplished in a longer duration depending on the time agreement between the auditor, auditee, and the quality management. Further, as internal auditors recruited from the staff of the same organization as the auditee, there is no information barrier making the audit flowing smoothly. There are no extra transportation and accommodation costs for the auditors and there may be no professional fee payable to the auditors either. Most people interpret the word ‘audit’ as the examination of the financial matter. In this paper, however, it refers to quality related to a laboratory especially calibration laboratories. It is therefore, the term ‘quality audit’ is often used to ascertain the meaning. It is no secret that all accredited calibration laboratories carry out an internal audit on a regular basis, mostly annually. Besides, it required by the international standard of ISO/IEC 17025 (ISO, 2005), they enjoy benefits in general term mainly because the internal auditors know most problems faced by the auditee and they