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Operation in China & South of Asia 
ISO 9001:2015 Certificated 
Find out Standards for Differerent Types of Factory Audits
Which type of factory audit should I choose?
A factory audit serves as a tool to help you steer clear of these and other issues. It entails visiting the supplier’s facility and evaluating them based on various criteria to ascertain if they can fulfill your requirements as a purchaser.
A factory audit is one specific form of third-party inspection – rather than checking a shipment itself, it evaluates the supplier’s overall production system and compliance capability. If you want to understand how third-party inspection works more broadly before diving into audit standards, this is a good starting point.
Before we check out the factory audit standard, let’s familiarize ourselves with the different types of factory audits below.
GMP audit is a type of quality audit that only applies to manufacturers of certain product types, GMP audit standards also focus on product quality purely in relation to product safety and efficacy, This differs from ISO 9001, which focuses on the ability of a supplier to meet their customer’s requirements.
Environmental audits ensure your suppliers are compliant with national and international environmental standards. ISO 14001 is the most common standard for environmental audits that evaluates the supplier’s environmental management system.
Certain retailers and brands require this audit to remain compliant with Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) regulations in the U.S.
Compare the difference of different type of audits
ISO 9001 is a globally recognized quality management standard issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
AQI Service’s Simple Factory Audit and Extensive Factory Audit are both based on a checklist derived from the ISO9001 series (a set of quality standards developed in 1987 by the International Organization for Standardization), that’s factory audit standard comes out.
The audits are one of the most undervalued tools for ensuring optimum product quality and on-time delivery; importers typically rely on quality audits to understand a supplier’s production capabilities and internal quality controls,
Since many foreign manufacturers are ISO 9001 Certified, but the certificate alone doesn’t guarantee that the supplier actually embodies the standard’s principles in their operations, Certifications can often be falsified in China and elsewhere, and even honest suppliers sometimes lose compliance between official audits.
So the manufacturing audit checks the supplier’s production facilities for implementation of policies and practices compliant with ISO 9001 standards.
Generally, we will focus on the following aspects during a Factory Audit:
The audits can help you evaluate a supplier’s internal quality controls, equipment maintenance, and tool verification procedures so that the services can be served as a supplier qualification process.
The factory audits might also include checking ethical violations and social compliance, but they can’t serve as a replacement for below extensive social compliance audit standard SA8000 or SMETA.
More about the Factory Audit Service and Factory Audit Report Sample
Social compliance audits are sometimes also called social audits, ethical audits, or social accountability audits. Importers rely on this type of factory audit to verify and monitor their supplier’s working conditions for compliance with international labor standards.
Social audits also help retailers and brands manage social compliance risks that could impact their company’s reputation. Unethical labor practices and factory disasters like fires collapses, and explosions can all result in negative publicity for brands
But the audit fatigue caused by the lack of a standardized audit, suppliers have been subject to many different social compliance audits for different retailers or customers, so may retailers now accept international frameworks.
SA8000 is a voluntary standard based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions. The standard was created in 1997 by Social Accountability International, a leading global non-profit organization in the human rights field.
It’s a good choice for importers who don’t need to meet a specific retailer requirement or are conducting a social compliance audit for the first time.
SA8000 is a way for importers to ensure fair and decent working conditions throughout their supply chain. it assesses major areas of the supplier’s working conditions including
The auditor typically assesses the factory’s conditions by interviewing workers and management staff, reviewing documents, and conducting a walkthrough of the facility.
Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to improving ethical business practices in global supply chains.
Sedex’s factory audit standard is known as the Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA). SMETA audits are one of the most common factory audit standards in the world—Sedex currently boasts over 50,000 members.
SMETA audits are more detailed in some respects than SA8000 audits. Basically, SMETA has two audit frameworks: a 2-pillar audit and a 4-pillar audit. All SMETA audits include the following elements:
The 4-pillar audit includes all the above checks in addition to the following two modules:
The Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) is a leading supply chain management system that supports companies to drive social compliance and improvements within the factories and farms in their global supply chains. BSCI implements the principle of international labor standards protecting workers’ rights such as International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions and declarations, the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and guidelines for multinational enterprises of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
amfori BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) is one of the fundamental protocols for social audits chosen by companies worldwide.
The auditors will verify the compliance of your supplier’s facilities with all requirements of the amfori BSCI Code of Conduct, including such aspects as:
The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is an alliance of companies, trade unions, and non-governmental organizations that promotes respect for workers’ rights through lobbying and helping brands create and enforce fair codes of labor.
Brands and retailers which are part of the alliance take responsibility for improving the working conditions of workers in our modern, vast, and complex supply chains.
These codes are based on nine areas: freely chosen employment; freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected; safe and hygienic working conditions; absence of child labour; paid living wages; no excessive working hours; no discrimination; regular employment, as well as no harsh and inhumane treatment.
A factory audit answers one question: can this supplier reliably produce for you? It evaluates capability, systems, and compliance – not the actual goods on your specific order. That risk doesn’t go away just because a supplier passed an audit.
Once a supplier is qualified through a Basic, Quality System, or Social Compliance audit, the next layer of quality control shifts from the factory’s capability to your order itself. A Pre-shipment Inspection (PSI) verifies that once production is complete and at least 80% of the order is packed, the goods actually match your specifications – quantity, workmanship, function, labeling, and packaging – before the container is sealed.
In practice, most importers run both: the factory audit qualifies the supplier once (or periodically), while PSI checks every individual shipment. An audited, capable factory can still ship a defective order – the audit confirms the system is in place, not that this particular batch was executed to standard. Pairing the two closes that gap.
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