Introduction
The word audits might generate some associations to formal audits where an auditor from a third party visits a factory and inspects the conditions based on a checklist, and a factory might become certified or receive a specific audit report based on their performance. This is not the only intended use of the audits feature in Qarma. The feature allows you to collect information about your suppliers and production units through Qarma’s website or app and utilize and analyze it afterwards. An audit can therefore also be an assessment, survey, inspection, questionnaire, workout or similar.
When setting up an audit, you need to select the appropriate audit type for the task. The screenshot below, taken directly from Qarma, illustrates how to choose the audit type. Keep in mind that audit types can be customized to fit your specific requirements, including wording and the type of audit to be conducted.
Different types of Audits
You may find it beneficial to use Qarma for conducting multiple types of audits. Common examples of audit types include:
- Social Audit - Evaluate working conditions and social compliance through structured assessments of labor practices, health and safety, employee welfare, and ethical standards to ensure suppliers align with international regulations and customer codes of conduct.
- Technical Review - Assess factory capabilities with structured reviews of equipment, processes, workforce, and quality systems ensuring suppliers meet production and compliance standards.
- Onboarding Survey - to collect information to keep in Qarma or to assess possible future collaboration
- Environmental Audit - Evaluate environmental impact via reviews of waste, emissions, resource use, and compliance to ensure alignment with sustainability standards.
- Quick Scan - to quickly collect small amounts of information on a specific topic.
- Risk Assessment - to generate a risk score based on predetermined risk categories.
An audit type does not have a specific checklist connected. But you can choose to use the same checklist for the same audit type. But it may be that you want to remove or add some information requests for specific locations, suppliers, production units, etc. in a new version of the checklist.
If this sounds interesting, don’t hesitate to reach out for a free demo of what we can offer you! If you are already a customer and want to add this inspection type to your portfolio, reach out to support@qarmainspect.com or your contact person.