Outsourcing Supplier Audit

Outsourcing Supplier Audit

It’s crucial to have confidence in your suppliers and ensure uninterrupted supply of goods and services. Your supply chain is only as good as its weakest link and the only way to ensure a continuous supply, is by having an effective vetting process in place.

Supplier audits undertaken by EQMS is a cost-effective way to get an independent review of potential suppliers or ensuring a supplier is capable delivering to a given specification.

Our supplier audits follow similar concept as all our services, they are bespoke and flexible solutions, tailored to meet the needs of each individual client.

Benefits of Outsourcing Supply Chain Audits

• Flexibility: When outsourcing supplier audits, there is flexibility to scale the amount of work quickly depending on business needs.
• Efficiency: By using a third party like EQMS, you have the experience, knowledge and resources available from day one. It avoids the process of hiring qualified personal, training up internal recourses and creating the supplier audit and management function internally.
• Free up resources: by outsourcing your supplier audits you free up internal recourses to focus on your core business functions.
• Cost: Often the overall cost of outsourcing supplier audit functions is lower than setting up and maintaining the function internally.
• Eliminating fixed costs: The fixed costs associated with internal staff, training and recruiting will be eliminated.

Which Type of Supplier Audits Is Right for You

When accessing your suppliers, it is essential to understand what type of audit service you need. There are different types of audits; the appropriate audit for your organisation should be selected based on risk. Below if a brief description of different types of audits to determine what is right for you.

• Process Audit: This type of audits is often used by clients who want to access a supplier’s capability of producing a particular component. The audit accesses the effectiveness of the supplier’s process and the controls they have in place. The scope of the process audit is narrow, in depth and analytical in nature.
• Management System Audit: The management system audit has a broader scope than the process audit and access a larger part if the organisation in compliance with a standard. The standards we audit against are ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), ISO 27001 (Information Security) and ISO 45001 (H&S). We also offer this service in our outsourced internal audits.
• Compliance Audit: During this audit the compliance to a contract, regulatory and statutory requirement and industry standards would be assessed. For example, compliance with standards outlined in a contract,European Timber Regulations, Fire safety regulations, CE marking and legal requirements for Rights to Work check.

When to Consider Outsourcing Supplier Audit

A lot of organisations decide on outsourcing supplier audits and take advantage of some benefits it brings. Some of the scenarios where companies could benefit from outsourcing supplier audit functions are listed below.

• Repeat issues are seen from your suppliers and you need to understand what is going on and get the issue solved ASAP.
• There are no qualified or experienced resources available within the company to plan and conduct effective and value adding supplier audits.
• If a company want an impartial person reviewing their suppliers.
  When it is more cost effective to get the knowhow through outsourced supplier audit than bringing a new employee onboard.