Most factory audits are photographs of a clean building. They are useful for one thing: they tell you what the factory wants you to see. Everything you actually need to know is in what they did not photograph.
Three findings that should stop an order
1. The product you ordered is not the product they make
If the audit shows a different product than the one you quoted, the factory is quoting from a catalogue rather than from their own capability. This happens when a trading company is inserted between you and the actual producer, and it means the price you were given may belong to a factory that does not exist.
2. Nothing in the building relates to your product
A facility for making webbing should have, at minimum, webbing looms or braiding lines visible and a reasonable inventory of the yarn you specified. If you visit to find a factory that assembles pre-made components and nothing else, then every lead time you were quoted includes an assumption that may not hold in your favour.
3. The production line is not running
An idle line during your audit is not proof of a problem. It may be a seasonal lull, or the audit was scheduled for a break. But a factory that cannot show you recent output, such as production records, dated photographs or shipping documents for the same product, is one you should be careful with.
What to look at instead
- Raw material storage. Is it segregated by type? Is it off the floor? Is there evidence of material that matches the specification you agreed?
- The QC station. Not whether it exists, because every factory has one. Whether the gauge tools, the weighing scales and the test fixtures are present, calibrated and used.
- Non-conforming goods. Ask to see the area where rejects are held. A factory with a marked, segregated area is a factory that rejects rather than ships.
- The finished goods warehouse. If pallets of your product are stacked with mixed dates, you cannot tell when they were made. Ask for a batch number on the carton.
Questions worth more than the tour
- Two recent shipment documents for the same product, to a different customer, with quantities and dates. These are the hardest thing to fake and the most informative.
- A sample from the current production run, not from the showroom. You want to see your product, not their best one.
- The name of the person who will be responsible for your order after it leaves the factory. If that answer is a role rather than a name, expect to be handled by whoever is free that week.
What an audit cannot tell you
No audit tells you whether the factory will cut corners when the order is large and the deadline is tight. It does not tell you how they behave when something goes wrong. It does not tell you whether the QC report you received was written by the person who checked the goods.
What an audit can tell you is whether the business is what it claims to be. That is worth the trip, and worth the day. It is just not worth more than that.
