Failed a supplier audit? Here’s what to do next

Routine audits are essential for ensuring that manufacturing operations meet safety, quality, and regulatory standards. When you fail a supplier audit, it’s important to act on the feedback quickly and take measures to prevent future oversights. If you don’t, you run the risk of irreversible damage to your brand reputation and longevity.

Address the audit results

The first thing to do when you fail an audit is to address the issue(s) reported. How you do this will depend on the problem itself. Here are some examples of the issues you might need to address:

• Piece of equipment doesn’t have the proper machine guarding
• Manufacturing process doesn’t comply with a regulatory requirement
• Insufficient quality or safety controls in place
• Unsafe or unsanitary production environment
• Lack of proper documentation regarding processes or practices

Whatever the case may be, make sure you fix the issue right away. Oftentimes, you’ll have a limited amount of time to correct a problem before it affects your distributor contracts.

Analyze the underlying cause

The next thing you want to do is figure out how the failure happened by performing a root cause analysis. Look at areas like employee training, safety control measures, documentation practices, and operational procedures for possible sources of the issue.  Here are some questions to consider during your investigation:

• Is the issue the result of human error? If so, did the employee(s) receive training that should have prevented the issue?
• Were the control measures meant to prevent the issue in place or missing entirely?
• Is there any evidence of this issue being present before the audit?
• Have there been any incidents or near misses related to the issue found during the supplier audit?
• Did the issue show up on the last internal audit? If yes, what measures were taken last time to correct it? If not, why did the issue not show up on the audit?
• Are there any common variables between the audit failure and recurring issues within the manufacturing facility (processes, equipment, personnel, procedures, etc.)?

Try to understand how the failure happened and whether it’s part of an ongoing trend. To do this, you’ll need to search through your facility’s documentation of safety incidents, continuous improvement projects, change management activities, and more.

Implement preventative control measures

It’s not enough to address the immediate issue found during an audit. Implementing preventative measures is the only way to ensure the issue doesn’t resurface. Depending on the root cause of the audit failure, this process may take longer to complete.

For example, if the issue was a missing machine guard, then replacing it and scheduling a recurring inspection may be all you need to do. But if the problem was that you didn’t have sufficient documentation for compliance, then fixing the root cause may require more time and effort.

Document the measures you take and any resulting action items. That way, you can have evidence of your efforts for both internal and external purposes.

Action tracking

You need to track action items if you want to monitor the effectiveness of your control measures. Using incident management software is a great way to do this because it keeps all the data in one place.

With the Frontline ACT action tracking system, for example, you can:

• Create ad hoc tasks related to the failed audit findings
• Set up recurring preventative tasks for your team to complete
• Assign owners and due dates to all the things you have to fix following an audit
• Build reports of the work your team’s doing to address audit failures

If you have a software system in place, make sure you take full advantage of what it can do. Just the simple act of documenting your corrective action efforts can go a long way toward preventing future audit failures.

Communicate your supplier audit learnings

Although failing a supplier audit is a setback, it’s also an opportunity to reach a new level of performance. One of the best things you do with your learnings is to share them with your employees.

Communicate what the issue was, what you did to resolve it, and how you plan to prevent it moving forward so your workers can help you do so. Share this information with the buyer as well, so they understand your dedication to compliance. If you do this, then you can come out on the other side of a failed audit as a stronger company.