Most supplier audits fail not because the supplier is bad, but because the questions were too easy. “Do you have ISO 9001” and “can you send a sample” are answered by every trading company in the industry. These twelve questions are the ones where the answer tells you whether you are talking to a plant or to a broker.
Capability: Can They Actually Make It
1. Which steps run on your own site, and which are subcontracted? A producer knows exactly where the boundary is. A trader either does not know or does not want to say. Both answers are informative; evasion is the one that matters.
2. How many presses, and what sizes? Press count and tonnage set the ceiling on what they can supply and how fast. A supplier who cannot answer this has never been on the floor.
3. Can I see the classification line, not just the packing line? Grading is where a grade family is created. A tour that stops at the warehouse tells you about logistics, not about the product.
Quality: Can They Prove It
4. What is measured on every batch, and what is measured on request? The split matters. Anything measured on request only will not be on your COA unless you ask in advance.
5. What is your instrument for particle size, and who prepares the sample? The answer reveals whether size is a controlled measurement or a number typed into a template.
6. What happens to a failed batch? The correct answer involves a hold, a re-check, a disposition record. A paused answer usually means the answer is “it gets sold as a lower grade”.
Documents: Can You Get Through Customs
7. Can you send the ISO scope statement, not just the certificate? The certificate proves a system exists. The scope proves your product is inside it.
8. Who is your EU responsible person, and what is the registration number? If the answer is vague, your GPSR compliance is someone else’s problem in six months.
9. Can you issue an SDS for this specific grade and packaging, in English? A generic SDS copied from a template will not match the transport classification on your shipment.
Commercial: Will The Relationship Survive
10. What is the batch size, and can I stay within one batch for a trial order? A supplier who cannot keep a trial inside a single batch cannot give you a meaningful test result.
11. What changes between the sample and the production lot? Nothing should. If the answer involves “the sample was hand-picked”, you have learned something important.
12. Who answers when something goes wrong, and how fast? Ask for a name and a time frame, not a department. The quality of this answer predicts the next two years more than any certificate does.
How To Read The Answers
Specific answers with numbers, names and time frames indicate a producer. General answers that sound correct but contain no specifics indicate a trader or a reseller.
Neither is automatically disqualifying. A good trader with a strong factory relationship can be a better partner than a mediocre factory. But you should know which one you are buying from, because the failure modes are different: a factory fails on capacity, a trader fails on information.
What To Do With The Answers
Score them, but do not average them. A supplier who is strong on capability and weak on documents is a different risk from one who is the reverse: the first delays your shipment, the second delays your customs clearance. Both cost money, and they need different mitigations.
The best predictor of a working relationship is not the score. It is whether the answers stayed consistent between the first email and the audit visit.
Next Step
If you want to test the questions on us: how we run the plant, what we measure, and the documents we hold. A trial order route is described in the sample testing checklist.
Grades to start an evaluation with: HDY W50 to W1 and HDG.