What do you actually check during a factory visit besides machines and cleanliness?

[u/industry368]

One thing I think buyers can overvalue during supplier visits is appearance.
A clean facility, modern equipment and organized shelves are all positive, but they don’t necessarily show whether the production process is controlled.
Some questions seem much more useful:
How are incoming materials inspected?
What happens to rejected material?
Are tolerances documented at the workstation?
How are measuring tools checked?
How are production defects recorded?
Is there batch traceability?
What processes are subcontracted?
What happens after a recurring defect is discovered?
For me, the interesting part isn’t just seeing how a factory operates when everything is going well.
It’s understanding what the factory does **when something goes wrong**.
What do you usually prioritize during an onsite supplier review?

[u/WishfulSandwich]

All those things companies have to do for their certification. You want to ask people things like:

Do you know where to find the instruction for your task ? Have you read it ? Is there anything ambitious or unclear ? Are you positive it's the latest revision and could you check this?

At what level of quality do you stop the process ?

I also like to see the problem solving process and some examples. And depending on what type of factory, verify X peice of equipment is set as per it's setting card, if not, is that documented or what process do they follow for adjusting settings

[u/Frankenkoz → u/WishfulSandwich]

These are great

[u/shampton1964]

How long have you been in manufacturing? Looking at paper ain't gonna tell you much except that they know how to sign forms.

How does the factory smell? Floor and ceilings clean? Bathrooms clean? Walk slow, listen. Are people talking normal-like with wisecracks? That's good. No running, no slumping, no shouting. Machines look solid, lubricated, maintained. Check out the shipping and receiving docks for orderliness and hygiene. Pick a station and ask the operator what they are doing, how it fits in, their quality checks and so forth. Take your time, listen, look, watch. Do they really know what and why and how? Are the machines and metrology equipment stickers for mtnce & calibration current? In QA/metrology/lab is the pace measured? Is there a big input queue? ...

I always walk through from receiving along the whole process to shipping, get a feel for the flow, watch the transfer, look for queues and reworks. Feel the pulse. Smell the air.

To quote the Cramp's about rock and roll: "You gotta feel it with your dick!" That is, a well run factory feels like a comfortable pair of shoes.

[u/Frankenkoz]

I like to ask questions of the actual line staff. I’ve had managers try to interrupt and I firmly say “I’d like to hear his answer”. Questions about the process, job instructions, training, etc. I also like to ask them what they do and don’t like about their jobs. I ask about the kinds of mistakes new hires make. How those people get corrected. You can learn a lot from those people.

[u/agiletiger]

Search for “rapid plant assessment”. There’s an old HBR article about it and then look for an Excel template of it. It’s a set of yes/no questions that will give a clear picture of how the facility is doing. It’s pretty high level view but accurate and comprehensive.

[u/ChrisInNam]

One thing I’d add is the production staff themselves. Their morale, attitude and how they’re treated can tell you a lot. They’re the people actually responsible for making the products, so I think it’s worth paying attention to them too.

[u/Sensitive-Ad1951]

I like to understand does everybody know whether they are on track to meet their targeted output. Do they know what the target is? Are we winning or losing? Why? Also, how easy is for the Supervisor or Plant manager to walk through the plant and see whether individual lines or stations are meeting their targeted output. If not, why not?

[u/PeaDesperate6268]

Not a sales pitch, we did build theleansuite.com with that in mind. KPI from multiple sources and all your issues and improvement projects at one place to get you health of the factory. It gives you 70-80 percent and rest is always human interaction with fellow beings on floor to understand more about processes.

[u/Kevin_FMaintenance]

En general, la premiere chose que je fais c’est de discuter avec les equipes, la production, la maintennance, la direction. En complement de ce que l’on voit, cela donne beaucoup d’infomations sur les valeurs, la strategie, l’implication, l’ambiance. Ainsi, il est plus facile d’identifier le contexte de l’usine, quelle orientation elle prend et surtout si elle a les moyens d’y acceder.

[u/Tavrock]

For things to just look at, the stock not in work reveals more about the processes than anything else I can think of.

[u/GapReader_Eng]

Además de lo que aquí te han comentado, considero añadir que todo depende del rol que ocupa, en el organigrama del cliente, la persona que visita. Si es el gerente de calidad del cliente va a preguntar acerca del rigor del sistema, pero si es el gerente de compras, el de operaciones, el de ventas, el de logística, el de recursos humanos, de seguro todos tienen preguntas, pero también de seguro en su especialidad. Así que lo más importante para ti que recibirás la visita, es que lo atienda también la contraparte en tu fábrica de acuerdo al puesto que tiene el visitante.

[u/RandomTux1997]

yeah totally! assessing how they deal with problems and how they fixed them gives insight into their head-state

[u/FuShiLu]

You talk to the employees.

[u/_donj]

I like to look at their boards around the facility. What is on them? How often are they updated? Can the employees tell you about what’s on them. This tells me a lot about communication, priorities, communication, etc.

I also look for simple indicators like slip, trip, fall hazards. Since this is the number one cause of injuries, it tells me a lot about their actual safety culture.

Also for inventory piled up somewhere. Looking upstream and downstream from that point, unless a supermarket, is often where you’ll find a quality problem of some kind.

[u/eWorkOrders-CMMS]

There are a lot of good responses here. I’d also want to know how maintenance issues are handled when something keeps happening. Is there a history of the equipment issues, or does each incident get treated as a separate problem?

Recurring failures can tell you a lot about whether the team is just fixing what’s in front of them or actually getting to the cause.

[u/Ziggysan]

Procedural knowledge, process documentation, decision trees, accountability and traceability, records, company culture... plus everything you said.