During the audit of a supplier (or by a customer, depending on who is subjected to it), you might feel the same as when, as a student, you dreamed to be a teacher just so you could inflict on others all the injustices you suffered yourself. We are all audited at one point or another; the experience is always uncomfortable; and when the roles are reversed, it’s easy to switch from victim to executioner.

A customer-supplier audit, in particular, is in a way an orgy of hypocrisy. Companies rated highly on Google and Michelin starred restaurants may find themselves fretting about the smallest of things the day after an audit highlighting any number of petty points and, involving, 57 pages of checkboxes in English, which can only be “forgiven” if the auditor is quietly asked to change – the overall scorepurely as a favour, of course.

No, one shouldn’t just swoop onto a company’s premises and write about lots of non-conformities simply because the walls have not been painted blue, without first asking for them to be painted. A quality agreement is essential and the proper audit of a supplier should be based solely on that.

Except there are cases when regulations are thrown out of the window and the imagination runs wild! You need practicality.

The agreement must cover clear and detailed technical points and aspects of the process. It’s even better if reference is made to the skills of the personnel, the work procedures, the records to be kept, and the tools and equipment to be used. And without catch phrases such as: “the supplier undertakes to work in compliance with ISO 13485”. What for? For which processes? With regard to which products? I guarantee that a supplier can be perfectly compliant with 13485 without carrying out functional checks on very expensive parts with 6 months of supply and installed on products tested only at the end of production. (That’s bad, isn’t it?)

So if you’re a supplier, you work and submit invoices, and you’re good as a person and at what you do. Things must be asked of you and must be agreed. But if you are a customer… What do you care (we all dream of this moment, from that window from which a little too much light enters)… about non-compliance?