Everyone who sources from China is told to visit the factory. Fewer people are told what to look at once they are standing in it, and almost nobody is told what a visit cannot establish.
First, confirm it is a factory
A meaningful proportion of suppliers presenting as manufacturers are trading companies reselling under their own brand. This is not automatically disqualifying, but it changes everything about lead times, quality control and what happens when something goes wrong. Check the business licence and the registered scope of business, and ask to see production of the specific part you are buying rather than production in general.
The checklist
Paperwork
- Business licence, registered capital, and how long it has been trading
- Export history and whether they have shipped to your destination country
- ISO 9001 or equivalent, and whether the certificate is current and covers this product line
- Product-specific certification: CE, RoHS, UN38.3 where relevant
On the floor
- Is the line for your part actually running, or is it idle and being described
- What measuring equipment exists, and is it calibrated with in-date certificates
- Where does incoming material inspection happen, and can they show you the records
- Is there a quarantine area for rejected material, and does it have anything in it — an empty one usually means rejects are not being segregated
- How are work instructions communicated to operators
People
- Is there an engineer you can talk to directly, or only sales
- Who answers when your usual contact is unavailable
- How many people work on your product line specifically
The three things an audit cannot tell you
This is the part usually left out of sourcing advice.
- Whether they will still care when your order is small. Everyone is attentive during a visit. The test is what happens on your third reorder of forty units when a larger customer needs the same line.
- What their consistency actually is. A sample is built with attention. Batch three is built normally. You cannot see this on any visit, only across orders.
- How they behave when something goes wrong. This is the single most important supplier characteristic and it is only observable in a failure. Which is one reason to make your first order small enough that finding out is affordable.
What we do about it
We visit before quoting any factory we have not used, and we run the checklist above. We also keep our own record of how each supplier behaved on past orders — who was slow, who substituted material without telling us, who fixed a problem without being chased. That record is not published, but it is what determines who we put in front of you, and we will tell you honestly why a particular supplier is not on your quote.
Working on something in this area? Send us the BOM line and we will quote it. No obligation, and we will tell you if you should buy it locally instead.
Send one line and see what comes back.
You do not need a finished BOM to start. Send the single part that is currently blocking you and we will quote it. It costs you an email and tells you more about us than this page can.