Elements of Factory Audit – How to Check Supplier Quality Management Capability?

Factory audit can be divided into three stages. The first stage focuses on the overall atmosphere of the factory, including experience atmosphere and on-site communication. The second stage focuses on the factory’s quality control ability, including standardization, defective product control, product traceability, defective rate evaluation, visualization, equipment status and on-site inspection effectiveness. The third stage focuses on the overall space and other relevant conditions, such as space utilization, layout, laboratory and warehouse conditions.
1. Overall atmosphere
Experience atmosphere
1) On-site order and disordered environment are hotbeds for breeding risks. Good order is often the premise of product quality assurance and stability. An orderly working environment can also improve employees’ sense of responsibility and quality awareness.
2) Staff morale, high staff morale, focus, and seriousness show that the grass-roots management is scientific, the working environment is comfortable, the staff mentality is peaceful, and the commodity production efficiency and quality stability are naturally guaranteed. On the contrary, employees are absent-minded, chatting, distracted, and wandering, which will bring many potential risks to the commodity supply and need to be highly vigilant. In the follow-up audit process, it is necessary to purposefully identify the corresponding risks.

 

On-site communication
Talk to the workers on-site for a few words, and you can get an important first impression from the workers’ facial expressions and body language, because these directly reflect the workers’ mood and satisfaction with the factory. At the same time, pay attention to whether there is uneven busy and idle. For example, when the machine is in automatic processing, the workers are idle for a long time, or the workers in some stations are waiting for materials for a long time. This phenomenon shows that the factory lacks lean management, personnel utilization is low, idle employees will also affect the working atmosphere of others, the overall work efficiency is low, and the quality risk will rise.

 

2. Quality control capability
Standardization
Standards are the best state and unified implementation reference. Without standards, there can be no implementation, and there is no focus for improvement. There should be many standards on the production site, including operation and quality standards, 5S and safety standards, operation and maintenance standards, process and rework standards, safety stock standards, etc. Many factory sites have SOP (standardized operation process). We can observe whether these standards have omissions, whether they are easy to implement, and whether there are breakpoints in the middle. Check whether the writing, speaking and doing are consistent, and whether the quality control points are highlighted with eye-catching signs or colors.

 

By observing the specific operation process of different employees in the same process, we can find out whether there are differences, including action sequence, operation strength, omission, etc. The difference indicates that employees lack standardized operation training, so the possibility of commodity variation is greatly increased.

 

Defective product control
On-site observation shall focus on the treatment of defective products in the workshop. Good factories will expose problems, not cover up bad products and waste products. For example, focus the waste with a light or use a red label to highlight it, so that you can immediately know whether the waste is increasing or whether a section of the production process is producing defective products.

 

Commodity traceability
The traceability of work in progress and semi-finished products can also be easily seen on site. In a good factory, each part has a card or a document to follow the flow, indicating the source, processing personnel, equipment and other information. Problems found in any process can be easily traced back to the source and easy to improve.

 

Defect rate evaluation
By observing the quantity and proportion of defective products, we can also preliminarily judge whether the quality control process of a factory is qualified. For example, when auditing a supplier, it was found that more than 20 nonconforming products were accumulated at the end of the finished product line around noon. After confirmation with the production staff, the average daily output of this production line is 1000 pieces. According to this estimation, there are about 50 defective products every day, and the defective rate of finished products is as high as 5%, which shows that a large number of quality problems have not been found in the previous processes, the defective products have been flowing to the end, the quality control is very weak, and the cost of manufacturing defective products must be very high.

 

Visualization
Visual management is the basis of many advanced management means and the visual communication of the management level of a production enterprise. Visual tools can be found everywhere in well managed factories. Including organization and standardization of workplace, visualization of outcome indicators, visualization of standard operation, visualization of control indicators, visualization of automatic error prevention and correction, alarm mechanism, etc. During the audit, pay attention to looking for various visual tools. Visual management Kanban can be divided into static and dynamic management kanban. Static Kanban mainly conveys the long-term management concept of the organization. Dynamic Kanban is the management information that managers should grasp at any time, which can better reflect the management level and ability of a factory.

 

Tool and equipment
In a good factory, the equipment is clean and well maintained, and the equipment-related information is clear at a glance and updated in time. For example, in the machining workshop of a foundry, although all kinds of lathes are not very advanced and even have a long history, they all operate in good condition. A card is prominently posted on the side of each machine, recording the model, purchase date, price, supplier, repair record, maintenance record, etc. In addition, the daily spot checklist is also recorded completely. Some spot checklists clearly record the hidden dangers found by the operator, as well as the signature and treatment scheme of the equipment department. This shows that equipment management and maintenance have formed a benign system.

 

Field inspection effectiveness
Walking on the production site, you often pass through one production line. At this time, it is recommended to get close to see if there are standards or standard books, operation instructions, etc. on the production line. Some enterprises will set up special sample storage areas. What I prefer to do is to catch a QC on site, ask him how to conduct the first inspection and patrol inspection, and then look at his inspection record sheet at that time. It is clear at a glance whether to do it or not and whether it is good or not.

 

3. Other factory audit elements
Space utilization and layout
The larger the production workshop is, the better. The space utilization reflects the lean management level of a factory. If the equipment and process layout are too scattered, in addition to wasting space, a large number of unnecessary materials are carried out in the factory, and the risk of process control failure needs to be paid attention to.

 

Laboratory
Whether all kinds of experimental equipment in the laboratory are complete can reflect the consciousness of enterprises in commodity quality control. First, check whether the necessary equipment is equipped, which is also a requirement for the reviewers themselves. The reviewers must have a certain understanding of the goods and know the key control points of the goods. Secondly, it is necessary to check whether the testing instrument is within the effective verification and calibration cycle, and it is also necessary to check the corresponding report. Generally, in the laboratory, the standard operating methods will be posted next to the equipment or instruments. We can invite the experimenters to explain or demonstrate, on the one hand, to confirm the reliability of the test methods, on the other hand, to understand the familiarity of the experimenters with the instruments.

 

Warehouse
Material storage, batch management and visual management can be seen here. First, whether there are certain requirements for the storage and preservation of materials, such as humidity, temperature and stacking height, and whether the warehouse site meets such requirements? Are there testing instruments and records? Are the good and bad products in the warehouse placed separately? I do not advocate the necessity of zoning. If the site conditions are limited, logo management can also be used, as long as the effect of differentiation is achieved.

 

Is there an account for the materials in the warehouse? Are there any materials provided by customers and how are these materials managed? Is there any inspection status identification for production materials? Whether to implement FIFO management and how to implement it? At this time, it is recommended to record the batch number of raw materials and finished products at random for standby.