Do you feel confident in your decision if you begin working with a specific new supplier whom you have not yet seen or carried out a factory audit on the location of its facility?
The only thing alarming for Chinese importers than finding out about a “bad product” is to learn that your cargo was rejected by Amazon because the labels were wrong.
This is why, before importing anything from China, you should be knowledgeable on how to do a factory audit in China.
Although they may initially seem difficult and expensive, but they are inexpensive and simple. The likelihood of being deceived can be practically eliminated.
What is a factory audit?
A factory audit is nothing but the assessment of a factory on-site. The main objective of performing a factory audit is to determine whether a manufacturer is competent enough to fulfil your given order perfectly in accordance with your specifications.
Therefore, a factory audit usually is going to focus on a single item (category). For example, if you wanted to make e-bikes, and you identified a company that also manufactures electric skateboards as well as bikes.
Here the auditor will mainly try to focus on assessing the manufacturer’s capability to fulfil your specific order of only e-bikes.
An auditor will therefore visit the factory during a factory audit. This auditor could either be you, your coworker, or a professional auditor from a different company.
As soon as the auditor arrives at the factory, he will start gathering data about the company’s manufacturing plant and working with a checklist of guidelines that the factory must adhere to.
Generally speaking, your standards and requirements will be based on international standards and are going to be the foundation of the China factory audit checklist.
Finally, the factory audit’s results are compiled in a report that gives a thorough breakdown of the manufacturers’ capacity and capabilities.
How to perform a China factory audit?
If you are located in a faraway country from China then you can also hire a trustworthy agent in China who should be capable enough to perform how to do factory audits in China.
There are companies available who can provide such services who can not only audit any company in China on your behalf, but also do very complex inspections and tests for various products that you are manufacturing in China.
The standard factory audit will include the following:
- Checking of manufacturer’s background
The auditor must enquire about the past background of the company.
- Checking the company’s manpower
Qualification, expertise of the available manpower is an important parameter to check during the factory audit.
- Checking the production capability
Check whether the company has enough capability to produce your product of required quantity at your acceptable quality.
- Checking machines, facilities, and equipment
The availability of machines and other facilities is also very important to check.
- Checking the in-house quality system such as testing and inspection
Quality inspection and quality system adopted by the manufacturer is also another vital thing to check.
- Management system and capability
Check how is their management structure is and how sensitive they are to customers’ requirements.
- Environment
Check how is the environment where the manufacturing will take place.
Conclusion
It is very important to know how to do a factory audit in China before you enter into a long-term agreement on outsourcing from that country. You must select a suitable team to do such a factory audit.
Such services are also available in China through a certain trusted agent who is familiar with your product.
The factory audit must include checking the manufacturer’s background, manpower, production capability, machines available, manufacturing process, quality system, management system, and the manufacturing environment.
