What an audit is for, and when
A factory audit answers a different question from an inspection. An inspection judges product: this carton of this style against this specification. An audit judges the system that would make the product: whether the plant can hold a specification at all, across sizes, colors and weeks. The desk audits a new partner plant before the first order, and re-checks when a program changes in a way that matters - a new product family, a much larger ladder, a different destination market with new paperwork. The standing description sits on the factory audit page; this note is the working checklist.
Timing matters as much as scope. An audit before the deposit is leverage; the same findings discovered after bulk release are a negotiation. The desk therefore fixes the audit before sample rounds with a new plant whenever the program is more than a trial. The sample round itself is evidence the audit reads - whether the sample room and the bulk floor are one system - and a tech pack released to an audited plant is read by the people and machines the checklist just verified.
The checklist
The desk works the audit in eight sections. Each produces a written finding, not an impression.
| Section | What is verified |
|---|---|
| Company and export standing | Business license, export qualification, how long the plant has operated in this product family |
| Family and equipment match | Equipment for the family in scope: cup molding, seamless knitting, lace handling, elastic attachment; bulk lines for bras, panties or both |
| Quality system | Incoming fabric checks, in-line QC stations at cutting and sewing, final inspection, how defects are recorded and fed back |
| Materials control | Fabric inspection on receipt, elastic and trims lot control, swatch retention per color for batch matching |
| Sample room versus production floor | Who makes samples and who makes bulk, and whether sample-room quality reaches the bulk lines |
| Workforce and lines | Sewing line composition for the ladder in scope, subcontracting declared line by line |
| Documents | Test reports per lot, material certificates such as OEKO-TEX Standard 100 held per certificate per lot, machinery lists |
| Compliance documentation | Social and trade compliance paperwork per buyer requirement and destination market |
Documents requested in advance
An efficient audit starts before anyone enters the building. The desk sends a document list ahead - business license and export qualification, the plant's own test reports from recent lots, material certificates for the fabrics in scope, a machine list for the family, and the workflow the plant proposes for the program, including declared subcontracting. Reading the paperwork first does two things: it verifies what is verifiable remotely, and it sharpens the on-site hours toward the questions the documents raise. A certificate that names a different fabric than the one quoted, or a machine list without the machines the family needs, becomes the first stop of the walk-through rather than a discovery at the end of it.
On site or by video
An audit can be run on site or by structured video walk-through, and the desk uses both, coordinating through partner inspection teams. Video covers the checklist honestly when the camera is led line by line - cutting floor, elastic stations, QC bench, warehouse - and when documents are read on screen rather than summarized. What video cannot replace is the hand and the eye: the recovery of an elastic squeezed between two fingers, the evenness of a zigzag at speed, the discipline of a floor where thread is cleared and bins are labeled. That is why first audits for a large program justify the trip, while video audits keep re-checks and smaller programs honest between visits.
The video format has its own discipline. The desk asks for a fixed route agreed in advance, a live walk rather than a recording, close-ups on request - a stitching line, a hook-and-eye station, the QC bench with its defect log - and screen-shared reading of licenses, certificates and recent test reports. Plants used to the format run it briskly; plants that resist the format are answering a different question, which is itself a finding the desk records.
Red flags the desk takes seriously
- Samples produced on a dedicated sample line that bulk never touches, with no plan for the gap.
- Certificates that exist as files but cannot be produced per lot against current production.
- A plant that will not say, specifically, which steps it subcontracts.
- No swatch retention, which would leave reorder color matching running from memory.
- Every answer yes. A plant with no rejects in its history has not been looking.
None of these is automatically disqualifying. Each is a question that has to survive a written answer before the program moves, because each becomes expensive exactly when the order is largest.
After the audit
An audit ends in a graded report: findings by section, each marked as met, minor or major, with follow-up items and owners. Minor findings become written corrections with dates; a major finding in a load-bearing section - the quality system, materials control - pauses the program until a re-check clears it. The report goes into the program file beside the sealed samples, so the next reorder starts from evidence rather than from recollection. The daily-control layer that runs after release sits on the quality control page, and the product-side check before shipment is a separate exercise, covered in the note on pre-shipment inspection.
Re-audits are scheduled, not assumed: a major finding closes only when the desk or its inspection partner has seen the correction, and the re-check is noted in the same report so the file reads as one continuous record. Buyers sometimes ask whether an audit can be skipped for a plant recommended by a trusted contact. The desk keeps the audit - relationships change, floors change, and the checklist exists precisely because confidence is not evidence.
Where the desk fits
Audit coordination is desk work: the desk shortlists partner plants, commissions the audit through partner inspection teams, reads the report and keeps it in the file. A buyer opening a program through the quote form receives shortlisted plants whose current audit status is stated plainly - audited on site, video-checked, or new - together with the cluster reasoning behind the shortlist in the note on China's intimates clusters. Verification before the deposit is cheaper than every alternative that follows it.