The photos are staged. The paperwork is not.
A supplier sends you a factory video. Clean floor, new machines, workers in matching uniforms. It tells you almost nothing.
We have learned to treat that video as a marketing asset, not evidence. A factory audit is a document-first exercise. The shop floor confirms what the paperwork already claims — it rarely reveals things the paperwork tried to hide.
This is how we run a China factory audit, and what we refuse to pretend we can promise.
Why we start with documents, not the shop floor
Anyone can prepare a factory for a scheduled visit. Move the outdated stock out of frame, bring in workers from a sister plant for the day, print a new organization chart. The building will look exactly as good as it looked in the video.
Paperwork is harder to stage, because it has to stay consistent across systems that different people keep.
So before we book a visit, we ask for documents. If the documents contradict each other, we stop there and tell you so — a site visit will not fix a supplier whose own records disagree.
The five documents we ask for first
Not a wish list. If a supplier cannot produce these, the audit is not worth booking yet.
| Document | What it actually proves | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Business license | The legal entity exists, and who signs for it | Name on the license differs from the name on the proforma invoice |
| Production license or mandatory certification | The factory is permitted to make this product category | Certificate belongs to a trading company, or to a different plant |
| Shipment records from recent months | The plant has actually been producing and exporting | Quantities shipped exceed what the listed equipment could plausibly produce |
| Equipment list for key processes | The critical step is done in-house, not subcontracted | The key step is outsourced and never disclosed |
| Quality exception records | Someone is tracking defects, not just inspecting once | No records exist, or records are all clean, which is its own warning |
Two of these deserve emphasis, because they are where most sourcing losses start.
Certificate holder vs. business license. A certificate photographed against a factory wall means little. What matters is whose name is printed on it, and whether that legal entity is the one issuing your invoice. When the certificate belongs to an affiliated plant, we ask for the relationship in writing before we treat the certificate as valid for your order.
Subcontracted key processes. Plating, heat treatment, molding, and surface finishing are commonly sent out. That is normal in Chinese manufacturing. What is not normal is a supplier who does not say so. If the critical step happens somewhere else, your quality control has to happen somewhere else too.
What we walk on site, in order
We book a full working day and move through five stops. The order matters — it tells us whether the paperwork describes the plant we are standing in.
- Raw material area. What is stocked, how it is identified, whether incoming material has any incoming inspection record at all.
- The key production process. The single step that decides whether your product works. We watch it run, not just look at it.
- The quality control station. Where the person sits, what instrument they use, what they write down, and whether the log for last week exists.
- Finished goods warehouse. Packing method, labeling, and whether finished stock is separated by customer order or piled together.
- The office. This is where we reconcile: purchase orders, production schedules, and shipment records against the equipment list we were given.
The fifth stop is the one clients underrate. Walking a line takes an hour. Reconciling what the line claims against what the office records is where most of the real information is.
Red flags that end a visit early
We would rather end an audit and refund the unused time than deliver a report that says “acceptable” because nothing obviously broke during a tour.
- A quality control station that is empty, with no log and no instrument beyond a ruler
- Shipment volumes that cannot be produced on the equipment actually installed
- A key process that turns out to be outsourced after the supplier said it was in-house
- A certificate whose holder is not the entity you are contracting with
- A plant manager who cannot explain the production schedule for the current week
None of these prove fraud on their own. Together they change the question from “is this factory good?” to “is this supplier telling us the truth?” — and the second question has to be answered before money moves.
What a written report should contain
A report you cannot act on is worse than no report, because it creates false comfort.
Ours states what we observed with photographs taken on site, what documents we were given, what we were refused, and what remains unverified. It separates three categories explicitly: verified, claimed but not verified, and not available. The third category is the one most reports quietly omit.
We do not score suppliers out of a hundred. A number invites you to treat a judgment call as a measurement.
What we do not claim
We are not a testing laboratory, and a factory audit is not a product test. We do not certify that your goods will pass inspection, and we do not promise a defect rate.
What we do is narrower and more useful: we tell you what we saw, what we could not confirm, and where the risk sits before you place a deposit. We treat that as part of China supply chain risk management, not as an inspection product. If the answer is “we do not know yet”, we write that down too.
For European importers weighing a first order from a new plant, that honesty is usually worth more than a pass mark.
Let’s Talk Before You Place the Deposit
If you are close to placing a first order with a new Chinese supplier, send us the company name and the product. We will tell you what can be verified before a visit is worth booking, and what a visit would actually cost for your case.
No commitment required. Just a conversation.
Email: [email protected] WhatsApp: https://wa.me/message/QPR7JMHO3NFZE1 Based in: Xi’an International Trade & Logistics Park
Archer Sourcing helps European, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern businesses move cargo from China via the China-Europe Railway and overland corridors. We operate from Xi’an — the departure hub of the Chang’an rail service.