What to look for when visiting a factory
The first time you go out to tour a factory, it can be overwhelming. Your hosts will walk you through the line, stopping at key stations to show you their most impressive technology but rushing past the things they don’t want you to dive into. There will be workers and inventory and machines in seemingly random places (and most likely coffee will be terrible). Your supplier management team will need to make a quick assessment of whether this is a “good” factory and whether your company is going to put the fate of your product in their hands. There is just too much to evaluate without pre-planning what you are going to look at and how you are going to compare your suppliers. This checklist provides a basic primer on what to look for. More information about each item is given in Chapter 14 of Product Realization.
What to look for when visiting a factory
The first time you go out to tour a factory, it can be overwhelming. Your hosts will walk you through the line, stopping at key stations to show you their most impressive technology but rushing past the things they don’t want you to dive into. There will be workers and inventory and machines in seemingly random places (and most likely coffee will be terrible). Your supplier management team will need to make a quick assessment of whether this is a “good” factory and whether your company is going to put the fate of your product in their hands. There is just too much to evaluate without pre-planning what you are going to look at and how you are going to compare your suppliers. This checklist provides a basic primer on what to look for. More information about each item is given in Chapter 14 of Product Realization.
- How clean is the factory?
- Do they use the right protective equipment?
- Do they have sufficient environmental controls?
- Do they train their operators and ensure they have the right training for each process?
- How do they control ESD (electrostatic discharge)?
- What is the soldering quality?
- How clear and concise are their SOPs?
- How organized is the work area?
- How much inventory is there on the floor and it is organized?
- Do they keep inventory segregated correctly (high value, quarantined, environmentally sensitive?)
- How advanced and responsive is their MRP (material resource planning) system.
- Do they hand material correctly to ensure it doesn’t get damaged?
- Do they quarantine defective product correctly?
- How organized and comprehensive is their IQC (incoming quality center)
- Does the company treat their workers, their community and the environment with respect?
- How old is their equipment?
- Do they have comprehensive preventative maintenance systems?
- Do they use best practices for manufacturing processes (i.e., SPC, process control)
- How complete and up-to-date are their quality reports?
- Do they have a corrective action plan?
- Do they actively reduce costs without impacting quality?