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World Class Factory Audits That Include Your Customers

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By Ed Eisermann - GEA Consulting

Factory Product Audit with Customer Participation

Do you have the confidence in your product to invite a client to your factory floor to participate in an audit of your product? There are three steps to develop the confidence to take this step:

• Creation of a procedure with and a record of audit attributes and repeat demerit score of 5 or less.
• Practicing for the audit
• Customer participation on audit day 

Many companies perceive their products to be "best in class".  Is management prepared to put their reputation on the line with the participation of a major customers in a factory product audit? If yes; read on to understand how the process evolved at a major HVAC manufacturing factory.

Step 1 – Procedure and Audit Attribute Record Form

A documented procedure and audit check sheet needs to be created.  Selection of the product attributes to audit should combine customer perception, critical assembly activities and engineering specifications and sales/marketing attributes.

Procedure

The procedure should follow current company procedure format:

1. An introduction that focuses on the process goals.
2. The audit frequency
3. The process owner. The audit process should be owned by the internal group responsible for Quality Assurance.  It is important to walk before taking the leap to invite a client to participate in an audit.  It may take several years of internal auditing, measurement and corrective action before offering an invitation to a customer. The internal audit trend will tell you when it is appropriate.
4. The corrective action process, charting and communication of audit results
5. The scoring strategy

For the AUDIT process to be a valuable tool and measure of process improvement it must be based upon a demerit scoring system.  The scoring is subjective . (Experience has shown that over time the auditors become tougher in their scoring).  The audit attributes should be limited to what an audit team can accomplish in an hour. The audit attribute list should include current customer complaints, key assembly inspection repeat findings and engineering and sales and marketing specifications.

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