Today’s economy is global, companies compete with each other all over the world. The portfolio of potential suppliers is becoming wider  and choosing a good partner is becoming more difficult.

Supply chain management

Supplier audit is a very important part of the supplier selection and management process. It is particularly important in companies with a supply chain management concept.

A supplier audit helps identify and anticipate risks that may arise in the supply chain. The audit also enables you to assess provider performance and stability in the context of procurement planning, as well as the achievement of operational and strategic objectives. It is a tool to categorize suppliers into reliable and less reliable ones. Regular supplier audits have an indirect impact on reducing costs resulting from poor quality raw material, downtime of machinery due to lack of components or materials for production, as well as the production of poor quality finished product.

The supplier audit is used primarily by quality managers and purchasing department representatives.

Supplier audit process

A supplier audit differs from an internal audit and a certification audit because the criteria (set of requirements) are set by the company that will perform the audit. Its frequency also depends on the needs and requirements of the company.

Some food safety systems directly require the company to implement a documented procedure by performing audits.

When creating a supplier audit procedure, the first thing to remember is to define the requirements for auditors. The requirement criteria in this case could be, for example, the auditor’s work experience, competence, expertise, knowledge of the audited processes or internal auditor certification. Based on these requirements, auditors will be selected to plan and conduct the supplier audit. The auditor’s task is, among others, verification of production processes, their efficiency, control of raw materials, supervision of nonconformities or verification of procedures. The auditor uses a checklist in order to effectively check whether the audited entity meets certain requirements. The data collected during the audit is then analyzed and reported by the auditor.