What is Factory Audit
A factory audit is a detailed analysis of factory performance regarding its capabilities to fulfill needs of consumers by providing outstanding services and products, to keep their employees satisfied, to negotiate with vendors efficiently and to maintain its plants and machinery. Factory audit is done in order to find out any possible errors committed purposefully or by mistake in the above-mentioned company tasks. Via factory audit it is assured that all present errors (if any) are highlighted by the proficient auditor/audit team and company is asked to correct them, after correction of those errors, revised record sheets are again consulted by auditors and if they find it satisfactory then audit is winded up in the form of audit report.
An audit not only identifies errors but it also highlights what more a firm could need to make their products distinguished and make the company capable to produce products or provide services as per consumer demands.
Types of Factory Audit
Generally, there are three major types of factory audits,
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Quality Audit
This audit ensures product produced has met all quality standards before, during and after production under Quality Control or the Quality Management system e.g. in case of textile industry a product must meet TQM, ANSI and ISO quality standards
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Security Audit
This audit ensures that firm’s supply chain is secured from terrorist activity under Customer Trade Partnership Audit (C-TPAT) initiated by U.S. government for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that requires few firms to undertake this audit in order to trade their products
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Social Audit
This audit deals with social cause norms like if firm do have child labor, the employees are not given breaks or they are working more than the time set by ordinance etc. In short, this audit checks whether firms are following local labor law under SA 8000 or not
Social Audit
Social Audits also called the social accountability audits and ethical audits are conducted in order to examine the supply chains of the merchants just to find out whether they are following labor laws. This deals with the labor rights in the form of facilities provided to them at their workplace, their working hours, lunch and rest breaks, fire and emergency exist, insurance and medical allowances and first aid kits. This is how firms are saved from negative word of mouth they could cause firm serious losses in the form of brand devaluation if the firm is not taking care of its labor force properly.
Asia Textile Inspection providing Factory Audit Service
At Asia Textile Inspection (ATI), factory audit is conducted to confirm whether the supplier is responsible for supplied goods or not. This is done by deeply examining the profile of supplier/company which answers two basic questions; one whether a supplier has the capacity to produce the required product and other whether suppliers have adequate resources to produce the required product under quality control system. Moreover, factory audits conducted by ATI are not only quality based but they also analyze the security and most especially the social audit perspectives as well.
Conducting factory audits helps the retailers and consumers to know whether their suppliers are meeting their spoken profiles or they just bragged about their proficiencies and in reality, they lack many required capabilities to follow codes of conduct and rules of production.
Overall audits provide following benefits to the suppliers, retailers and consumers,
- Protects human rights and labor rights
- Explains the ethical terms of business
- Validates quality control and mandatory quality certifications of firms
- Affirms the firms are capable enough to produce the targeted orders
- Confirms that firm has required plant and machinery