Supplier Audits That Find Problems Before Your Production Does
Your certificate says your suppliers are evaluated. Your last supplier-caused batch failure says the evaluation was a questionnaire. A second-party audit — you or your representative auditing the supplier directly — is how manufacturers actually manage the risk that arrives on the goods-in dock. It is also the deepest specialism we have: supplier quality is where Teresa spent most of her engineering career, and almost nobody else in ISO consultancy leads with it.
Why this is our lead service, not a line item
Supplier quality is usually the last chapter of an ISO consultant's brochure. It is the first page of Teresa's CV. At Ceres Power, the Horsham fuel-cell manufacturer, she spent five and a half years as Quality Engineer for chemistry: qualifying suppliers of critical chemical raw materials, writing the material specifications they were held to, running supplier product audits and supplier development programmes, and handling the PPAP submissions and 8D investigations that OEM supply chains demand. Before that she managed non-conformances and assisted external audits as Quality and Development Manager at FSi, a passive fire protection manufacturer. Seven years of the discipline, across sectors — which is why a supplier audit from us looks different from a checklist visit.
When a questionnaire stops being enough
Self-assessment questionnaires and certificate-collecting are fine for low-risk commodity purchases. They stop being enough when the supplier can hurt you in ways you cannot inspect away at goods-in:
- A critical raw material — a catalyst, a resin, a speciality chemical — where batch-to-batch variability does not show on the certificate of analysis but does show in your yield.
- A toll or contract manufacturer running your formulation, where their deviation-handling is your product risk.
- A single source whose failure stops your line, and whose change control you have never actually seen.
- A contract packer whose label error becomes your product recall.
- Any supplier whose failure has already cost you a customer.
ISO 9001 clause 8.4 scales control with risk — for these suppliers, proportionate control means going to look.
What we audit when we get there
- Your product's actual path — not the supplier's showcase line. We follow your part number or grade through their planning, production, inspection and release.
- Change control — the question that predicts most supplier problems: what happens at their end when a raw material, process parameter or sub-supplier changes, and would you find out before your process does?
- Traceability and retained samples — can they reconstruct the batch you will one day complain about?
- Specification alignment — whether what they test and release against is actually your specification, at its current revision, or a version from two years ago.
- Their own supply chain — your risk includes their single sources and their toll operations.
- Competence and capacity — whether the people and equipment producing your product can keep doing it at your forecast volumes.
What you get back
A written report within days, not weeks: graded findings with objective evidence, an overall risk view of the supplier, and recommended actions ranked by what protects your production first. Where the relationship warrants it, the report is written to be shared with the supplier so it becomes their improvement plan rather than your filing. If the audit feeds a formal qualification decision, the report is structured to support it — the same way an OEM supplier quality function would expect.
Beyond the one-off audit
The audit is often the start, not the end. We also support PPAP submissions and 8D investigations with suppliers, supplier development programmes for the vendors you cannot replace, and building a supplier evaluation system inside your ISO 9001 QMS that an auditor will recognise as real — criteria, risk tiers, re-evaluation, and the audit programme itself. On a retainer, supplier surveillance becomes routine instead of a crisis response.
Practicalities
£650 per supplier audit day, published like all our fees. UK-wide; no travel charge in Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Hampshire or London — elsewhere it's 45p a mile from Brighton plus accommodation at cost where an overnight stay is needed. We can audit against ISO 9001, your own supplier quality agreement, or both — the agenda is agreed with you before anything is booked, and sector does not limit us: the discipline is the same whether the supplier ships catalyst powder, intumescent coatings or machined parts.
Audit a supplier
A supplier audit is £650: agenda agreed with you in advance, a day at the supplier focused on the processes that touch your product, and a written report with graded findings and recommended actions. Delivered by a qualified ISO 9001 Lead Auditor who spent five and a half years qualifying and developing suppliers of critical chemical raw materials for a fuel-cell manufacturer.