Factory Technical Audit

Factory Technical Audit

Household Goods Factory Technical Audit

A technical quality audit assesses your supplier’s existing quality systems. 

Factory technical audits are a great at assessing your factory’s quality systems, from quality manuals, any previous certifications to its production processes and whether or not they have internal quality control teams, designated storage space to the calibration of machinery and factory floor layout. 

All of the above-mentioned things add to the functionality of your supplier’s factory and plays a huge role in the quality of product that they can produce for your brand.

In many instances a supplier’s ISO 9001 certification is not sufficient to assure your brand’s or product’s quality.

Buyers need to understand the supplier’s organization and practices in order to bridge potential gaps between sales arguments and practices on the production site.

By having one of our auditors visit the production site and prepare an impartial household goods technical audit report of a factory, API can provide you with an objective picture of your supplier’s organization and evaluate its capability according to:

  • International regulations by product category and by final market destination.
  • Customer specific requirements.
  • Industry best practices.

Benefits of this Factory Technical Audit

By implementing this type of auditing approach, our you will obtain different benefits:

  • Ensure that your factory’s quality systems are up to date, organized and well recorded having a better overview of your suppliers’ practices and implementing corrective action plans if required.
  • Ensure confidence in the quality of the product that is manufactured by evaluating risks of non-quality and determining adapted quality control measures.
  • Ensure confidence in the selection of your supplier based on the assessment’s insight and establish long-term partnerships.

Why choose API for your Factory's Technical Audit?

Our Approach Delivers an Unbiased, Comprehensive and Relevant Analysis of your Supplier
Because we maintain a close relationship with our customers, we can deliver a truly dedicated level of service and in particular through:

  • Customized responsive solutions that bigger companies are not able to provide.
  • API Audit‘s unwavering dedication to making all possible efforts in support of its customers.
  • API’s objective to become an integral part of our customer’s quality management system.

Because we believe that an audit result has no value without a genuine impartiality, we place a strong emphasis on Ethics. This is why in API has implemented:

  • A code-of-conduct with ethical values that goes beyond the requirements of accreditation schemes.
  • Staff training, continuous supervision, and random inspections to ensure adherence to the company’s code.
  • Strong procedure for monitoring auditor integrity.

Because we believe that only strong product and production expertise can bring added value to our customer, we placed a strong emphasis on training and maintaining a highly skilled team of auditors:

  • Mix of international and local staff in auditing teams.
  • Auditor selection based on skills, knowledge and experiences.
  • Strong in-house training and expertise follow-up procedures.
  • Technical managers involved in European Standardization Committees.
API Household Goods Factory Technical Audit

Our Quality Management System assesses whether your supplier’s top management has committed to continuous quality improvement process and whether the framework necessary to achieve adequate quality levels is in place.

The quality management system specifically evaluates the responsibilities and authorities; the Quality Manuals & Operational Procedures; company policy, objectives, targets and indicators as well as commitment to continuous improvement; documentation and records control and finally the customer satisfaction and complaints management.

API Product Qualification assesses whether your supplier has the relevant product knowledge and is able to manufacture products that comply with international regulations and the customer’s requirements.

API audits specifically evaluate internal quality control standards; the design and engineering of new products; the knowledge of international regulations; the capacity to ensure products conformity and effectively manage technical construction files management, and finally, internal laboratory evaluation as well as relationships with and control of 3rd party laboratories.

API Mass Production Control assesses your supplier’s organization and implementation of quality procedures at each step of production which allow supplier mass production to achieve the necessary quality level.

API Audits specifically evaluate the selection of suppliers of incoming materials, the handling of incoming materials, the quality inspection procedures upon receipt of materials (IQC); workplace organization (planning, performance follow-up, layout); factory capacity, production tools and workers training; the handling of semi-finished products, quality inspection during production (IPQC) and finally the handling of finished products and final quality inspection (FQC) up to shipment procedures.

In order to evaluate the capacity of your supplier to deliver goods in a disorganized work environment, we have developed a final step: the “Production Flow Control” process.

This step is designed to help you to evaluate whether or not your supplier has taken into account threats for product quality arising from badly organized and unclean work environment.