If you start working with a new supplier that you haven’t visited or audited on-site, do you feel safe about your decision?
I have talked to many people in that situation, and they usually haven’t fully realized what they might be missing. So, that’s what I am going to cover in this article.
(I am discussing only audits of a factory’s quality system and processes, in the context of a company buying from a supplier located in China, Vietnam, India, and other low-cost countries.)
Here are 7 ways skipping an on-site audit can hurt your business.
1. It is a test of how serious the supplier is
If they are not interested in your business, they will refuse your request of sending an auditor. It’s better if you know about that upfront.
If they are secretive, they will also push back. That’s also a good thing. If you deal with a secretive supplier, you will never have transparency on the areas that matter to you, and that means you will not have control over your supply chain.
Also, if they have issues and you can’t send someone to analyze what is causing those issues, you will have to rely on their engineering capability and they ability to prevent recurrence in the future…
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