Pre-purchase inspection:

How to use Pre-purchase inspection of AIM Control to supplier audit to ensure effective Vietnam/China/Korea/India and Asia sourcing

How to make sure your potential vendor is a serious partner

1.     What does supplier auditing & pre-purchase inspection normally include?

There are fundamentally two types of audits:

Factory Audits which assess the system used by the factory to control quality and run their business.

Social Audits to assess supplier compliance with safety and environmental standards.

2.     How does supplier auditing and pre-purchase inspection help companies to reduce risks in supply chain?

When talking about “risk”, there are two main kinds of risk.

Risk that your factory will not produce the agreed product at the agreed quality, price and lead time.

Risk that your factory will disappear with your deposit or payment.

A factory audit of AIM Control Inspection Group http://www.aimcontrolgroup.com) helps to mitigate both risks because a legitimate manufacturer (as opposed to a broker or trading company) is less likely to disappear when there are problems. In addition, a legitimate manufacturer will have a system to control quality, whereas a broker may be here today, and gone tomorrow.

3.     According to our experience, what are some typical problems most frequently identified during supplier auditing?
The first type of problem results when the seller is not the actual factory, but instead may be a trading company or other type of agent. These agents usually fight hard to ensure the buyer doesn’t do an audit because:
a) they worry that the buyer will go factory direct to get a lower price
b) they are aware that they lack an effective quality system and are likely to fail the audit.
So the problem is that sometimes intermediaries don’t allow the buyer to conduct an audit. The solution to this is simple – find a new vendor!
The second common problem is the “bait and switch”. Some sellers will have an audit done at one factory, but then produce in another factory which may have lower pricing but a poor QC system and low workplace standards. The best way to avoid this trap is to state clearly in the contract that the factory address audited will be the location of production for the order.

4.     Are supplier audits necessary for established suppliers, or are they only useful for qualifying new suppliers?
You are right that audits are a critical element in selecting a new supplier. However, due to the rapid changes in company ownership, management, customer bases and product focuses in China, Vietnam, Asia We would recommend performing periodic audits on all suppliers to ensure consistency in the supply chain by our audit services. Such our fees of audits are usually not expensive in China, Vietnam, Asia (http://www.aimcontrolgroup.com) we can offer specialized auditors, production monitoring and defect sorting service at a reasonable price (mostly involving hundreds and not thousands of USD). So audits are an affordable tool.

5.     Some companies may prefer to have their own on site monitors at supplier locations. Is this an effective way to ensure supplier performance?
The degree of monitoring that you need depends on the complexity of your requirements and the volume of your business. If your requirements are fairly straight-forward and you only need periodic audits and inspections at the supplier, then it is more and more costs in comparison with to hire our auditing and inspection, surveyors services.

If your orders are very large and or your requirements exceedingly technical, we also have experts to provide inspection, survey or audit for you. Therefore, in most cases if you order us to provide outsourcing audits and inspections to specialists or our auditing and inspection, surveyors services for vendor coordination will save money while still ensuring reliable production. Furthermore, your are foreigner (without Chinese, Vietnamese, Asian) you could not know Chinese, Vietnamese as us.

6.     How can buyers determine the effectiveness of our supplier auditing programs?

Our offices and partners present at Vietnam, China, Korea, India and  Asia region to do your representation to carry out an auditing and pre-purchase inspection program and we are independent inspectors, surveyors, auditors, experts do the best services to prevent product defects and lower instances of needing to switch suppliers for you. Over time, an effective program should deliver positive results that are worth many times the cost of the service.

Please kindly review our Factory Audit Servcies   and  Factory Audit Assessment

Email us: aimcontrol@hotmail.com, aimcontrol@vnn.vn, inspection@aimcontrolgroup.com