Sourcing
22 October 2026
An audit is not a tour. The useful part of a factory visit is a small number of physical facts that are hard to fake once you know where to look — and most of them are visible in the first hour, before anyone has prepared a slide.
This is the sequence we would use if we were buying from a supplier we had never met, with the observations that actually carry information.
Ask for six documents. Half of them you can verify without leaving your desk, and a supplier that hesitates on the first two is telling you something.
This is the highest-information room in a phone case factory, and it is the one suppliers least often prepare. What you are looking for:
Two things matter more than the machine count: whether the tonnage matches the part, and whether the machines are running.
| Observation | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Small cases on very large machines | Either poor tooling strategy or filler work — both cost you on price |
| Idle machines at 10 am on a weekday | Capacity is available, which is either good news or a demand problem |
| Regrind bins at the machine | Recycled material is in use; ask the percentage and get it in writing |
| No dryers on TPU lines | Moisture in TPU causes splay and weak welds; a serious line dries its resin |
| Parts in open bins without count sheets | No traceability, and a defect will be untraceable to a lot |
Pad printing, hot stamping, UV print and laser all fail differently. What you want to see is a first-off approval board: the first good part from each run, signed and dated, mounted next to the machine. If first-off approval exists, there is a process. If it does not, quality is a person's memory.
In packing, look at the station itself rather than the finished pallet. Are there count scales? Is there a barcode scanner recording carton contents? Does the polybag station have a suffocation-warning roll at hand if the bags need it?
What must physically exist: a calliper and a height gauge, a colour light box with D65 and TL84, a set of retained standards, a tensile or pull tester for attachments, and a written AQL sampling plan. What signals trouble: an empty light box used as a shelf, retained samples with no dates, and an AQL plan that is described but not written down.
These are different visits and buyers routinely conflate them. A quality audit asks whether the product will be right. A social compliance audit — SMETA, BSCI, WRAP — asks about hours, wages, safety and subcontracting. A factory can pass one and fail the other, and the certificate for one says nothing about the other. Know which one your retailer is asking for before you request it.
Score each area 1 to 5, weight by what your order actually depends on, and decide before you leave rather than after a week of email. For a first order the honest weighting is roughly: tooling and process 30 per cent, quality system 25, capacity and delivery 20, documentation 15, commercial terms 10.
If the audit is going well, the next step is a paid sample rather than a larger promise. The sample round article covers what to ask for in that sample and what to measure when it arrives.
Business licence, the quality certificate number with validity dates, a mould list, a machine list, recent test reports with the sample description, and two contactable references. Verify the certificate number with the issuer before you travel.
It is a starting point, not a guarantee. It says a system exists; the audit tells you whether the system is used. Always check the certificate number and the scope on the certificate.
Half a day is enough to reach a decision if you walk the mould store, the injection hall, the print and packing areas and the quality room in that order. A full day is only needed if you are auditing a new category.