Does anyone use a 3rd party firm to review and close out all non-conformances?

I manage the corrective action program (CAR) and do all the things required of that program, keep it moving along, make sure a RC is done, that they are assigned properly and after all the actions are done and put into the ready for review step - I review and close. If I was assigned the action I get one of the Internal Auditors to review and close so I am not approving my own work.

One of the managers has an idea in her head that we need a 3rd party to review and close ALL of our non-conformances - not just ones from 3rd party audits. Does anyone else use a 3rd party firm to do this?

No, we never use that, and I've never heard of such a requirement. Does your manager realize that her idea would require unnecessary financial investments?  

Interestingly enough we actually do this for our clients.

But only as a review mostly - as internals are so often a bit more intimate as in the eyes are at the plant and not here in our office.

Handling it fully like one of your managers is saying to do brings into the mix a really big thing at audit time when you have an auditor doing a drill down and they ask how you arrived at this and how you arrived at that and you say - Oh, our consultant or 3rd party provider did that for us, seriously unless you can figure out a good way to handle this it could be a sticky point in the audit process.

Most times we do a review only and do not do the actually close out, but review the close out - I think  you would find that more advantagous if  you were to go this route.

Frankly, unless you are handling loads of items I'd be more apt to keep it in house with you and your team.

sorry for the typo's i'm moving fast today with a contract.

I haven't seen this as a requirement in any audit scheme I've been involved with. I did have a large customer require it when I worked in the sugar industry, but only for their own third party audit findings, never for internal CAR's. Sounds like a nightmare to me. With the large customer I just mentioned, there was so much miscommunication and misinformation between just their auditor and the company that it was almost a joke to even bother. It turned into the third party contacting the big customers auditor and basically asking them "does this corrective action satisfy you for us to close this finding" "yes.." "Yes? Ok I will approve it." 

At first we assumed the company would be coming to our plant to verify the CA was completed. They didn't. I couldn't see how it was better then us just closing it with the auditor themselves using pictures or other docs. I don't see how it helped us improve, or how it in any way verified the CAR was closed. Was a bit of a racket if you ask me..

Seems like you have "unlimited' resources to even consider this.

If you are a big corporate, if this manager insist, maybe you have corporate QA in charge and can do the closing of CAR.

But for me it seems over-ly. As long as you are trained and can carry out effective RC then you should be good to close the NC.

Well looks like they willing to spend in that case on something not needed or required.