A factory tour shows you what the factory wants you to see. The useful information is in three places the tour usually skirts: the QC bench, the rework corner and the raw material store.
Establishing that it is a factory at all
The first question is whether the entity you are dealing with manufactures anything. A trading company with a showroom and a partner factory is a legitimate business model, but it changes pricing, control and lead times, and it should be known rather than assumed.
Indicators that are hard to stage:
- The business licence on the wall should name the entity you are contracting with, at the address you are standing in. A mismatch is worth asking about directly.
- Machines with your product's process. A factory claiming injection moulding should have moulding machines, and they should show wear consistent with the claimed years of operation.
- Work in progress that matches the claimed product range. A quiet line during a claimed busy season is worth a question.
- Staff who can answer process questions. Ask an operator what tolerance they work to. In a real production environment someone knows.
The QC bench
This is the highest-information stop in the whole visit, and it takes ten minutes.
Look for:
- Measuring equipment, and whether it carries current calibration labels. Uncalibrated gauges mean the numbers on the inspection records are decorative.
- Written inspection records for current production, filled in by hand during the shift. Records completed in a single pen at a single sitting were completed for you.
- A defect standard or limit sample at the bench, so inspectors judge against an object rather than an opinion.
- What the inspector actually does when a defect is found. Ask to see the last one. The answer reveals whether there is a process or a bin.
The rework corner
Every factory has one, and its size tells you the real defect rate. A large pile of units awaiting rework in a factory quoting a very low defect rate is a contradiction worth raising politely.
Two things to ask: what the most common defect is, and what was done about the cause. A factory that answers both is managing quality. A factory that says defects are rare while standing next to a full rework bench is not.
The raw material store
Material is where cost is cut invisibly, and the store shows how it is controlled:
- Are materials labelled and segregated, or stacked together? Mixed material is how the wrong grade reaches a production run.
- Is there incoming inspection for material, with records?
- Is there a quarantine area for rejected material? A factory with nowhere to put rejected material does not reject any.
- Do the materials match what your product requires? If your specification calls for a particular grade, ask to see it in the store with its certificate.
Questions that produce useful answers
Open questions about capability produce rehearsed answers. Specific questions produce information:
- "What is your capacity per month for this product, and what are you running now?" — the ratio matters more than either number.
- "Who else do you make this for?" — not to get names, but to see whether the answer is confident.
- "What is the longest-lead material in this product?" — tests whether they have thought about your order.
- "Show me the last order of this type you shipped." — records, photographs, packing list. A factory that made it has evidence.
- "What happens if inspection fails?" — the answer reveals whether they expect inspections to be real.
What a visit cannot establish
Worth being honest about the limits. A visit shows a snapshot: this factory, this day, this line. It does not establish financial stability, it does not guarantee that your order will run on the line you saw, and it does not prevent subcontracting.
Two things reduce those risks more than a longer visit: an inspection during production on the first order, and a written agreement that production will not be subcontracted without notice. A visit is best understood as one input among several rather than as the verification itself.
After the visit
Write it up the same day, while detail is fresh: what you saw, what you were told, what you could not verify, and what to check on the next visit or the first inspection. Six months later, when a quality problem appears, that note is what tells you whether the problem is new or was visible from the start.