There have been a lot of people asking “how can you check a potential supplier for us? what kind of audits do you do?” if you need to qualify a potential supplier and you want to have a potential factory in mind, then the first two questions are “is it possible to send someone and do they accept to be audited?”
How To Qualify Potential Supplier?
Well, in these times of covid pandemic, that’s a problem in certain countries. In some cases, we can do e-audits like a remote audit. asking for some procedures for some records, interviewing people asking how to do things. not as good as being on-site, but it does give an idea at least about their competencies and their understanding of what they should do.
There are also some other ways to qualify a potential supplier without going there, even without them knowing it. checking their legal records, certain countries where a lot of information is available in government databases. it’s possible to send someone, but they don’t want to be audited. for example with some of the masks and gloves factories that refusing to be audited, then in cases like this, we would ask for a factory & write some comments, then when we’re there, if we can be in touch with the factory members, we can ask them a few questions, it’s a little bit of auditing, but usually without the grading at the end or without anything that looks too scientific. but usually, when we visit, the auditor normally would walk around and say a few comments in the reports and apply some of the checkpoints that they usually apply during an audit, but maybe more informally. just still trying to gather some information even when the factory party is reluctant.
Then let’s say The factory agreed to be audited, which is the most common cause. so the real question is what do you want to know? what do you need to know about this factory? do you want to focus on their quality system, their production processes, their supply chain processes, or all the above? is it very focused on social compliance? maybe on their capacity to make your orders? maybe it’s more about can they make it in-house versus contracted? and there are some other kinds of audits about social compliance and the environment. this more and more focuses on their ability and willingness and record of environmental friendliness.
How Do We Conduct a Factory Audit?
When we talk about their quality system, different considerations are depending on their factory scale.
-1- If it’s a small factory, there’s no need to go very much in-depth, they might not have any quality system. usually, we would ask something about “do they have ISO 9001 certification? how many people work there? what kind of product do you focus on?” and then if we have a feeling that there’s not going to be much, there’s no need to go in-depth, a more simple kind of evaluation, certain things that will check – do they document a standard for the customer and do they have approved samples and do they train their workers and their inspectors and how do they do the inspections and how to qualify their suppliers and such, but without going much in-depth.
-2- When it’s a mid-size or large factory, then we can go more in-depth, we call it technical and quality audits. it is still very much what people call a quality management system audit(QMS audit), but not focused on following the requirements of ISO 9001 or another one of the standards. usually what we do is something based on our checklist, based on what we saw as relatively important to our buyers, and then if you want a more in-depth check by an engineer on the systems and processes and spending a lot of time on the factory floor, that what we called a technical product process audit. we look at their process controls, preventive maintenance, staff training, instruments, and gauges. all of these things are quite important if you want to reduce the risks of having non-conforming goods shipped to you. sometimes we do programs. for example, we come back maybe once a month for the technical process audit and we tend to focus on different parts of their systems. usually, it’s called a layered process audit(LPA). it’s a way of keeping some pressure on them, it does help. in other cases, it might be more like a biennial or annual re-audit, with a little bit more focus on the issues that were found last time. this is also quite common.
Any Risks Related To Social Compliance?
You don’t want any of your suppliers to have child labor, forced labor, and very dangerous operations with people working without any protective equipment these kinds of things, you don’t want that. this is the kind of news that can be very detrimental to your brand. usually with a social compliance audit, we would have followed up with all the retailers’ very specific requirements and with all of the standards that have appeared, this is still mostly based on SA-8000 and local law. but we mostly do overviews – that is what we called the technical and social audits. these tend to be a few technical criteria and social compliance audits. we try to focus only on the most important if it has to be in only one day on-site.
Do They Have The Capacity To Make The Order?
There’s also another kind of audit that is useful when you’re not sure the factory is ready to make your orders. do they have the equipment, do they have enough staff, and so on. capacity is based on what we see, we try to isolate the bottleneck process step and we observe how many pieces are made. something we also do in the technical and quality audits. but this one is focused on all of these aspects.
that’s it for the general presentation. when we talk about factory audit, always keep in mind, you want to make sure you qualify your direct tier one supplier, the one that will send the products to you, that will do may be the final assembly, but you will also rely on tier two suppliers, sometimes even tier three suppliers that you may have to qualify also. this can be done at several stages in your supply chain, not on your direct suppliers.