Manufacturing Inspections: Types, Benefits, Process, and Audit App

June 10 , 2024

Manufacturing businesses require constant audits and inspections to ensure productive operations, quality products, and happy clients.

With daily audits, manufacturing businesses can detect spaces to improve the production process and follow up on regulatory compliance.

In manufacturing, workers work on four aspects while auditing and inspecting: process, product, and system and capability audits. We will discuss all these in detail.

Manual inspection is no longer useful because it consumes too much time, requires a lot of effort, and is prone to human error.

Audit apps such as UrAudits come here to help them simplify inspections and enhance their productivity.

Here in this blog, we will talk about the following things:

• What is a manufacturing audit, and what is its importance?
• What is the checklist for manufacturing audits?
• How does the manufacturing audit process work?
• How UrAudits, an audit app is, the ideal option for your manufacturing factory audit?

What is a manufacturing audit, and what is its importance?

Or you called it a factory or production audit. It involves checking all the areas, products, machines used to make the products, people working there, and site conditions in the factory or production. Also, the stages the products go through during their manufacturing process, from procuring the raw material to the point where the product is delivered to the client (and even reverse logistics), come under manufacturing audits and inspections.

The core purpose is obvious: to ensure that all the people in the factory and production facility follow the SOPs and regulatory guidelines to ensure high-quality manufacturing.

Constant audits and inceptions influence the company’s net income. Companies can identify defects, inefficiencies, and possible dangers in real time, such as legal issues, reorders, and downtime, which affects the company’s sales and net income.

An in-depth inspection improves the production process for better operational productivity and helps in making handsome profits.

Who performs manufacturing or production audits?

First, make sure how complex the production process is and what resources it requires.

The more complex it is, the more resources it requires and, in turn, the stricter its auditing and inspection needs.

Overall, the QA team does this job, and some organizations even hire an outsourced team to perform all their factory audits for third-party auditors who are experts in related industry standards.

Even customers (here, customers mean organizations that hire third-party or supplier partners who provide logistic support, essential materials, or components needed in the production) also begin inspection to assure that the suppliers are complying with all regulatory industry standards and obeying the appropriate production process.

Types of Manufacturing or Production Audits

As discussed, there are four different types of manufacturing audits or inspections, each with a unique style applied during production.

1. Process Audits: Identify inefficiencies, blockages, and non-compliance activity during the product’s production process.
2. The system as a whole audit: Here, QMS like ISO 9001 standards are used, and the QA team checks whether the QMS is performing well throughout the entire organization to ensure its structure and productivity and to ensure products meet quality standards.
3. Product Audits: Once the product has gone through the production process, the team assesses whether it meets all the regulatory standards, clients’ needs, and quality specifications.
4. Capability audits: The customer or organization performs this audit to ensure that the supplier they are dealing with makes the required product material or components (or even logistics supports) per the company standards and delivers it within the given timeframe.

Advantages of Auditing the Production Process

• Enhanced product quality: When an organization knows the product is fully inspected at each stage, this means the quality of the product isn’t compromised, and the organization is confident that the product meets the quality standards.
• Enhanced efficacy: When each area of a factory is inspected, workers’ safety is ensured, and the product process is inspected, it means that every bottleneck, wastefulness, and space to improve is considered, which leads to an increase in efficacy.
• Low cost: – No unnecessary process, no waste, and no chances of an error, which makes the manufacturing lifecycle operative and reduces the chances of extra expenses occurring either during production or fewer chances of reverse logistics.
• Simplify production process: When inspected in time, possible issues are rectified before they can become bigger and cause big expenses to overcome. Hence, everything can be recognized on time.

Moving to a digital audit like UrAudits can help you make the smartest decision of your life. You no longer need to spend time entering data into spreadsheets or storing, sorting, and finding data in messy cabinets.

Manufacturing Audit Checklists

Let’s look at some vital manufacturing audit checklists that can be customized to your needs.

• Layered Process Audit Checklist
• Gemba walk audit checklist
• ISO 9001:2015 Supplier Audit Checklist
• 6S Audit Checklist
• 5S Audit Checklist
• Production Quality Control Checklist
• Vendor Quality Audit Checklist
• GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) Audit
• Audit Supplier Checklist

Download our audit application, “UrAudits,” and use this checklist using pre-made templates.

How does the Manufacturing audit process work?

Auditing in a manufacturing company has multiple styles based on the company size, production complexity, quality control systems’ effectiveness, and production length, such as the number of stages and risk.

But in general, the manufacturing company auditing and inspection cover the following steps: –

Stage 01: – Choose the factory audit type

The foremost phase is to analyze which type of auditing you need to perform based on the business’s objectives.

For example, if you want to use a system audit, your aim is to improve an organization’s entire QMS.

But if you want to emphasize recognizing nonconformities in the end goods, then go for product audits.

In this step, you also have to decide on the standard you’ll use to measure the effectiveness of processes and determine what resources and people you’ll need to conduct the audit.

Stage 2: Get ready your checklist and make an audit schedule.

Now, it is time to build a checklist that gives auditors guidance in your production facility audit process so nothing is overlooked. All the above checklists are musts and help specify the places that need inspection, verify the standards and regulations, and collect the important data.

Your audit checklist varies depending on the type of audit you select.

For instance, when you select the system audit checklist, it covers queries regarding ISO standards, quality control measures, organizational structure, and process flow.

A process audit checklist requires solving queries such as needed resources, monitoring the whole production process, and documenting protocols.

When the audit checklist is ready, it is time to determine the time, date, and inspection site and to alert all auditors, the QA team, and stakeholders.

Stage 3: Perform the Audit

In this stage, the QA team visits the production facility or a factory shop to inspect. The QA team can use lean manufacturing practices such as Gemba walks.

The inspectors collect data related to SOPs, process inefficiencies, workplace conditions, best practices, and all the other things needed for inspections.

A digital platform like the UrAudits audits app is the best option for smooth and solid auditing. The audit solution we deliver comes with pre-made checklist templates. You can take pictures as much as you want when you find a defective site or machine to prove it. You have the option to add comments or notes. And you can allot corrective measures for any issues that don’t meet the standards and need urgent attention.

Use the UrAudits inspection app for streamlined inspection and auditing, which you can even use offline on your tablets, phones, or laptops.

Stage 4: Document Findings

Once the QA team has completed the inspection, they need to gather all the data, such as any defective machinery found, staff activities, work assessment, product production process timeline, the quality of the machines used in the productions, and much more, in the form of an analytics report that mentions everything that needs to be taken to rectify any issues in the future.

This documentation helps make powerful future strategies to improve the manufacturing process and offers insights into what happened after they tried to fix things.

Also, these audits will serve as historical records, which help you to measure the present and future inspections and audits.

And with a digital audit app, UrAudits, you can generate ready-to-go reports with single clicks.

Stage 5: Decide and execute Corrective Actions

After generating reports and analyzing the required remedial actions, you can now access these reports in depth to detect the areas that failed to reach the business’s expected quality and regulatory standards.

Discuss with your team members and then come up with a powerful strategy that helps resolve the detected problem. The strategy must help optimize the production process, revive the original structure, and redefine the ways products are checked to make sure they meet the standards.

Once you figure out what must be fixed, you must do it step-by-step. Apart from giving tasks to people, managers need a way to check if things are getting done. They should be able to follow up and provide the job to someone else if it’s taking too long.

The UrAudits audit app lets you allot corrective measures to third parties, vendors, or contractors.

So, get started and do a demo with UrAudits, an audit app for Android or iOS.

Stage: 6 Schedule Follow-up Audits

When you follow up on the audits, you can evaluate the impact of the remedial actions you take after the first audit.

It will assist in determining how well the changes are applied and whether they influence the expected outcomes.

It can also help decide which areas need improvement to make the business’s manufacturing operations healthier, making the production process a practice of constant improvement.

Simplify your manufacturing factory with UrAudits.

Delegate corrective actions, build instant audit reports, and scrutinize the manufacturing process with the UrAudits audit app for iOS or Android now.

Download the UrAudits auditing app now.