The Gordon Manufacturing Company produces farm equipment. Its sales were about \($50,000,000\) last year. Ingrid Austin has been an internal auditor at Gordon for three years. She has an MBA degree and has completed successfully a number of internal auditing projects at Gordon. Most of her work, however, as well as that of her three fellow internal auditors, has been in financial and administrative activities.
The internal auditors have done litde work in other operating areas, but they are anxious to move into more challenging assignments. The company has a good reputation in the industry, turning out good products on schedule at reasonable prices. Recently, however, the Production Department has been having difficulty in meeting its schedules. Top management, upset by customer complaints, called for outside help. The company's public accountants made a survey of the production activities and submitted a report of their findings and recommendations. Management was not convinced of the results; it did not feel that the suggested actions would solve the problems and so the report was ignored. Ingrid was therefore assigned to make an internal audit of Gordon's scheduling activities in the hope that she could identify the difficulties. As her first step she gained an audience with the department manager, David Prodder. Here are some excerpts from their conversation:
David: What's your background, Ingrid?
Ingrid: I've an MBA from State College, and after two years with a national accounting firm, I came to Gordon three years ago.
David: What kinds of audits have you made at Gordon?
Ingrid: I've done audits of data processing, accounts payable, cash management, travel expenses, shipping, sales promotion, and blueprints.
David: It doesn't seem to me that you've had any experience in factory work. We've just been through an audit with the outside accountants. They made all sorts of analyses, asked a ton of irrelevant questions, told m\' people what to do, and drove my managers crazy. I wouldn't want to live through that again. And they had assured me that they had successfully completed a similar project at the Woven Textile Company. Now here you are — another accountant. What assurance do I have that your audit would be any different from the one the external auditors carried out?
Required: 

(1) What could Ingrid do to make sure her own audit reports earn a better reception? 

(2) What arguments can she present to David about her approach and how it differs from the public accountant's approach?

 (3) What audit steps could she discuss with David so as to ease his mind about her abilitv?