Welcome Factory Visit

How do you schedule a factory audit?

Scheduling is a single email or call. Send your preferred dates and a short note on what you want to review — the floor, the metrology lab, the quality records, or a specific part program — to [email protected] or call +86 13126536955. The sales team works in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Chinese, and Japanese, and pickup can be arranged from your hotel or the airport.

Give a day or two of notice so the right people are on hand — an engineer who can discuss your drawing and an inspector who can open the records. A factory that is open to a visit on short notice, and that puts the right people in the room, is signaling the kind of transparency you are there to verify in the first place.

What should you prepare before the visit?

The audit is most productive when you arrive with three things: a drawing or part sample that represents what you need, the eight-point supplier audit checklist, and the list of documents you want to see. Preparation turns a tour into a verification exercise — you are checking specific claims, not just looking at machines.

The drawing matters more than most buyers expect. Bring a print with at least one deliberately tight or awkward feature, and ask how the factory would fixture and measure it. The answer you get — a specific clamping plan and a named measuring instrument — is a faster signal of engineering depth than any page on a website.

What documents can you request in advance?

Most of the audit can start by email, before you travel. Request the three certificates (with certificate numbers), the equipment list, a CMM report, an SPC chart, and a first-article inspection format. When these arrive ahead of the visit, the on-site time is spent verifying the documents against the floor instead of asking for them for the first time.

Where is the factory, and how do you get there?

The facility is Dongguan Zhuohang Ltd, the legal entity behind the CNC Machining Precision brand, at No. 8, Shuibian Songyuan Road, Hengli Town, Dongguan, Guangdong, China 523470 (Chinese address: 广东省东莞市横沥镇水边松元路8号). The GPS coordinates are 23.048947, 113.990605. Hengli Town sits in Dongguan, reachable from Shenzhen Bao'an Airport or Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, and pickup can be arranged so you do not navigate the drive yourself.

What happens on audit day?

A structured audit runs in a fixed order: open with the certificates and equipment list, walk the floor along the process flow (incoming inspection, machining, in-process QC, finishing, final inspection), stop at the metrology lab and ask for a CMM report and an SPC chart, then trace one part back to its raw material. Close with the commercial questions — MOQ, lead time tier, and payment terms. The whole exercise fits in a morning and leaves you with a decision instead of an impression.

The order matters because it mirrors the part's own journey. If the floor flow does not match the documented process, or if a gate has no record, you have found a gap no certificate page will show you. Spend the most time at the two ends — incoming material inspection and the metrology lab — because those are where a supplier's real discipline, or its absence, becomes visible.

What should you do after the audit?

After the visit, compare what you saw against the eight-point checklist and note any gap between the documents and the floor. Then confirm the commercial terms in writing — MOQ, the lead time tier for your part, and payment — before the first production order. A factory that passes the audit is one you can place a pilot order with; the pilot, measured against a first-article report, is the final confirmation before volume.

How do you run a remote audit if you cannot travel?

Not every buyer can fly to Dongguan before the first order, and a remote audit is a practical alternative that still separates a real factory from a brochure. The format is a guided live video walk of the floor — from incoming inspection to machining to the metrology lab — with the camera following the process flow, not a marketing reel. During the call, ask to see the equipment list matched against the machines on screen, a CMM report and an SPC chart opened live, and one part traced back to its raw material in the system.

A supplier that shows the floor on a live call, with documents opened in real time, is giving you the next best thing to being there. One that offers only pre-recorded footage or declines the walk is telling you the same thing a quiet floor would tell you in person. Remote audits do not replace an on-site visit, but they catch the worst cases before you spend the airfare.

What should you confirm before the first order?

The audit ends in a set of written commitments, not a handshake. Before the first production order, confirm five things in writing: the material specification and mill certificate, the tolerance standard and the explicit callouts on tight features, the first-article inspection format, the lead time tier for your part, and the payment terms. With those five locked, the pilot order becomes a measurement exercise — the first article either passes the agreed report or it does not.

The pilot is the final gate. Order a small batch, measure it against the first-article report, and only then scale to volume. A supplier that welcomes a pilot and a measured first article is confident in its process; a supplier that pushes you straight to a large volume order is asking you to skip the step that protects you.

Frequently Asked Questions