An Overview of Manufacturing Audits

To ensure the smooth functioning of one's business, it is imperative to ensure that the supply chain side of the company is working efficiently. To ensure the effective functioning of the supply chain and for uninterrupted goods supply, it is essential to thoroughly vet existing and potential suppliers to assess the capability of the supplier to produce products that adequately meet the needs of one’s business and the risks associated with such supplier like the quality of the products made, timely delivery of the products, fluctuation in price among other things. To reduce the number of risks involved, businesses conduct factory audits to assess the manufacturing capability of the supplier and to assess and improve upon the myriad of risks involved.

Manufacturing audits area comprehensive and systematic valuation of the manufacturing process with a view to identifying and finding solutions to problems during different stages of manufacture. It mainly involves a myriad of aspects like the capacity of the manufacturer, systems used, and workplace environment in order to ensure that the manufacturer is capable of producing goods that fit well with a business’ specifications and requirements.A manufacturing audit is a comprehensive assessment procedure to understand the process it is performing satisfactorily. A manufacturing audit is usually associated with small production units. However, the manufacturing processes involved are thoroughly reviewed an audit supplements the normal quality control processes that are involved in assessing the efficiency and quality of the processes involved. A manufacturing audit is a process that is conducted to ensure manufacturing processes are under control. It also helps indicate the willingness of the business commitment to continuous improvement and to move beyond the status quo.

Manufacturing audits are conducted either by an internal audit team or can be outsourced to an independent auditing company, and the order process can be a single audit or an ongoing process. A third party audit partner like FastZeal can ensure high standards of quality and transparency in the manufacturing audit conducted. Manufacturing audits of a manufacturing company can take anywhere from a day to two weeks depending on the manufacturing unit, the number of processes to be reviewed in a business, the machinery and the size of the company.

Benefits of Manufacturing Audits

A manufacturing audit can be extremely beneficial in assessing compliance with certifications and regulations, improving manufacturing processes in order to reduce costs and to increase efficiency and conducting an audit of new suppliers or manufacturers.

There are many advantages of conducting a manufacturing audit, and some of them are as follows:

• Assessing and understanding the competence and capability of a supplier who has been employed for a project
• Conduct a reliable assessment of the capability of the manufacturer from various facilities the manufacturer provides.
• The manufacturing audit helps ensure aliment between the sourcing policies of one's company and the policies of the supplier
• helps evaluate the competency of factory management
• adequately domain where the business the manufacturer complies with various statutory legal and regulatory compliances and requirements
• Provide a comprehensive overview of processes, workflows and operations of the company.
• identify areas where the business has lacunas and find ways to improve
• Helps identify and mitigate the existing or potential operational, quality and ethical risks involved
• A manufacturing audit challenge makes sure that all the procedures are conducted aptly and in accordance with the industry practices and the expectations of the company
• A manufacturer audit shall allow the business to implement corrective actions for any errors which may be found.
• Conducting a manufacturing audit, choose that the industry is proactive and is doing everything possible to ensure the highest standards of quality unit supply chain
• the audit also helps in accessing the consistency of a process and what can be done to increase productivity, efficiency and workflows between various teams and verticals
• Conducting a manufacturing audit helps portray an image that the business continues to strive for perfection and improvement in the future.

Manufacturing Audit Checklist

When deciding to conduct a manufacturing audit, it is imperative to have in place an auditing strategy in order to make the audit a success. It is highly essential to have an internal audit checklist for one’s manufacturing company or production unit.

A manufacturing audit checklist can include the below mentioned:

• It is imperative to decide upon the process of manufacturing audit shall be conducted, the reasons for conducting the audit, operations arm/ undertaken successfully or whether it requires improvement or if the factory has any underlying issues.It is prudent to select the process that has a prior history of success and is relatively efficient. However, one can also choose a method which has a previous record of performance issues.
• Decide upon who shall conduct the audit.It is prudent to employ a third party partner like FastZeal to ensure high standards of quality and transparency in the audit conducted.
• Decide whether the audit shall be one off-audit or regular and ongoing evaluation. It must be decided how often the audit shall be conducted to assess the process. When more errors and shortcomings are found, the observations should be more frequent and must continue until the errors are reduced.
• It is advisable to create a timeline for the manufacturer audit with all the essential details set out for a fair and accurate audit of all the processes involved. Time should be setaside to cover entire shifts. However, the audits must be randomly conducted and must be scheduled to cover an entire shift.
• A manufacturing audit must be conducted in accordance with the timeline provided and after informing all the staff involved.
• The issues discovered during the manufacturing audit must be Documented and should come with the blueprint to implement a future plan for corrective actions and improvements
• All the employees and staff and others who would be affected by the results of the audit must be informed and must be given a chance to offer suggestions or justifications for an error found or to improve upon the situation
• Once an error or shortcoming is found, decide upon the best course of corrective action for the weaknesses based on feedback and professional instruments based on the regulations involved
• implement everything that is mentioned in the corrective action plan
• Once the improvements have been implemented, it is imperative to monitor the results of any change to determine whether the issues and errors which existed have been resolved or not. This shall help businesses build upon it and to continue improving the processes and the products manufactured as a result of it. Auditing is a process that is conducted to ensure manufacturing processes are under control. It also helps indicate the willingness of the business commitment to continuous improvement and to move beyond the status quo.

Manufacturing Audit Process Requirements

A good and comprehensive manufacturing audit requires the following:

• Informing the staff and employees in advance. This is prudent as manufacturing audits are conducted with the aim to penalise stakeholders involved versus the process to find out improvements and corrective actions.
• Rating scheme, which can accurately classify the issues and shortcomings discovered. The rating scheme will allow the business to identify problems so as to prioritise them while developing a blueprint and corrective actions based on it.
• Implementing corrective actions when an issue is discovered. Manufacturing audits should only be successful if corrective actions are implemented to rectify the problems discovered. The employees walking on the process must also assist, and finding a solution to the issues found are this world also helps increase the sensitivity of the employees towards the problem.
• Trained auditors. The team of auditors that are employed to conduct the manufacturing audit must have the expertise and more familiarity with the auditing techniques and the observation involved.
• Accurate and comprehensive procedures to conduct manufacturing audit is imperative.

Manufacturing Audit Process

Manufacturing audit largely depends upon the size of the manufacturing unit, the processes involved, the products being produced and the specific requirements of the client. Standard manufacturing audit shall include:

• assessing ownership of the factory
• evaluation of the legal operating status
• confirmation of the location of the factory
• evaluate the general production capabilities of the factory
• estimating the size of the business and counting employees

A technical manufacturing audit generally involves the above mentioned processes; however, a department audit or review shall include the following:

• Verification and assessment of the condition of the manufacturing facility, including the factory structure, compliance with labour law, number of employees, and workshop area, among other things
• Assessing the production system of the manufacturer, including the conditions of working, the facility involved, machinery and equipment, and my mental control system and technical capabilities, among other things
• evaluating the quality system to ensure that correct methodology is being used for quality control and the presence of inspectors
• considering the capabilities of the management
• assessing the financial conditions of the business

Fastzeal Manufacturing Audit Expertise

The manufacturing audits conducted by FastZeal comply with internationally recognised standards like the ISO 9000 standards for quality management systems. All our auditors are qualified professionals with proven expertise in their field experience, and they undergo regular assessment and training. While conducting a manufacturing audit, FastZeal auditors carry out extensive assessments of the manufacturing process and the management systems. Our standard manufacturing audit involves the following:

• Creating a factory profile
• assessing the production capacities
• reviewing the capabilities of the factory, and factory facilities, checking the conditions of the equipment and machinery involved
• organisation charts and workflow
• Quality assurance systems in place in the manufacturing unit

Our manufacturing audit packages a customisable and now for a high degree of flexibility to show the specific needs of every business. The following services can also be included in the evaluation process conducted by Fastzeal:

• Ethical audits are conducted to review social accountability in order to provide a safe, healthy and ethical work environment which follows applicable labour laws and practices.
• Structural audits to analyse the safety and integrity of the manufacturing unit and its premises. This shall involve auditing the fire safety measures, structural integrity, and relevant code, among other things.
• assessing procurement conditions
• evaluation of social responsibility associated with compliance
• research and development with respect to the sampling capacity
• evaluating health safety and hygiene standards of the unit
• assassin environmental impacts of the processes involved
• any other evaluations required