This article will briefly discuss:
- What are the benefits of conducting supplier audits?
- How often should suppliers be audited?
- Supplier Audit Software to help evaluate the reliability of suppliers
- Free supplier audit checklists you can download, customize, and use
Supplier Audit Benefits
Performing supplier audits can help businesses determine if their supplier’s current performance meets business operational standards. Here are 4 benefits of auditing your suppliers:
- Manage production downtime—manage the reallocation of resources more effectively and track how suppliers perform against SLAs.
- Increase profitability—manage supplier risks and quality-related costs.
- Ensure quality and compliance—determine if your supplier meets your standards by auditing their performance on a regular basis. Identify repetitive errors and potential risks in the process and develop contingency plans to solve these problems.
- Continuous quality improvement—evaluate and monitor the quality of the service and products that your suppliers provide. Gain a comprehensive overview on how your supplier performs over time.
Supplier Audit Frequency
A supplier audit is often considered one of the best first steps toward better supply chain management, improving quality and efficiency right at the source. Generally, supplier audits should be performed at least once a year and as often as required, depending on the risks involved with that specific vendor, or supplier risk profiles.
For example, maintaining the quality of a certain ingredient is crucial to manufacture your product safely. If that raw material from your supplier has been compromised—negatively affecting consumers, product quality, and production process—then you should audit that vendor more frequently.
Streamline Your Supplier Audit Process
Auditing suppliers involves an enormous amount of paperwork and documentation to confirm that quality standards are being met. More time is often spent on data-gathering and paperwork instead of focusing on remediating supply chain and vendor issues.
iAuditor by SafetyCulture can replace your paper-based supplier audits with a mobile application and a web platform. Can conduct audits with mobile devices, use voice dictation to take notes, and take photo evidence that automatically attaches into the report.
You can also customize supplier audit forms to suit your specific compliance needs, generate supplier audit reports before leaving the site, and review audits online—anytime, anywhere. Click here to learn more about how the iAuditor Supplier Audit Software can help you implement a risk-based compliance program.
Get started by downloading these supplier audit checklists for your business. All iAuditor templates are fully customizable and you can even create your own—no programming skills required!
Featured Supplier Audit Checklists
Vendor Audit Checklist
A vendor audit checklist is used to ensure that the vendor’s quality management system (QMS) meets business requirements and standards. This checklist can be used by vendors to document and report any non-compliance to quality standards. It has 99 items and been built to help the inspector to perform the following:
- Conduct a site walkthrough in the warehouse or production
- Use this template as a guide to identify any risk detected
- Assign actions to responsible teams concerning urgent issues that may arise during the audit
- Complete the inspection with a digital signature and timestamp to validate the audit
Supplier Quality Audit Checklist
A supplier quality audit checklist can help managers evaluate if the current QMS, context of your organization, operation, quality control, and product improvement complies with the ISO standard. Browse this collection of useful digital templates for suppliers and vendors to prepare for ISO 9001 certification.
Quality Audit Checklist
Visit this page to download helpful resources to help you conduct quality checks in your business processes and systems used for operation and production.
