The pre-award factory visit: what a day on the floor really tells you

Arrive with an agenda so the day is not spent being shown things

Send in advance what you want to see, who you want to meet by role, and how long you need on the floor. Ask for a live job in the process family your product would use, for the maintenance and calibration records of the specific equipment you would depend on, and for time with the supervisor of that area. Say plainly that you would like to spend the majority of the visit in production rather than in a meeting room. Bring somebody who knows the process technically; a commercial visitor alone will be shown a good tour and will come home with an impression rather than evidence.

Read the floor before you read the folder

Walk before the presentation. Look at where work in progress accumulates, because a pile is a constraint or a problem someone stopped solving. Find the rework bench and see how busy it is; nobody puts it on the tour. Check whether nonconforming material is genuinely segregated or merely on a different trolley. Look at gauges, their condition and their calibration status, at whether operators consult a work instruction or work from memory, at the state of the machines you would use rather than the newest one in the building, and at whether the site looks maintained in the areas nobody expected you to enter.

Follow one job from order to dispatch

Pick a job running that day and trace it end to end: how the order arrived, how it was planned, what documentation reached the operator, how a change would have been communicated, what was measured and recorded, what happened to the parts that failed, and how the paperwork accompanying dispatch was produced. Tracing one real job exposes more than any document review, because it forces the site to show the connections between its systems. It also identifies where records are recreated afterwards rather than captured as work happens, which is the single most reliable predictor of trouble later.

Talk to the people who would actually run your product

Owners and sales directors are practised at visits. Supervisors, planners, quality engineers and setters are not, and they know how the plant really behaves. Ask them open questions with no correct answer available: what slows this line down, what happens when a customer changes a drawing mid-run, who decides whether a doubtful part ships, how they were trained. If you need an interpreter, bring your own rather than accepting the host's, and notice how much of an answer survives translation. Consistency between what the office claims and what the floor describes tells you whether the management system is real.

Writing it up, and deciding what has to be fixed before award

Draft findings the same day, while you can still recall which machine and which conversation, and separate them into three groups: things that must be resolved before any award, things that go on an agreed plan with dates and an owner, and things you have simply noted and accepted. Send the list to the candidate and see how they respond, because the quality of that response is itself assessment data. A shop that argues about a genuine finding will argue about defects later. A shop that fixes two of the items before you have left the country is telling you something useful.

Frequently asked questions

Should a pre-award visit be announced or unannounced?

Announced, at this stage. You need particular people available and specific records produced, and an unannounced arrival at a company you have no relationship with usually gets you a car park and a polite refusal. Reserve short-notice visits for the period after work is placed, when access is contractual. What you can do at a scheduled visit is stay flexible on the day: ask to see an area that was not on the route, and pay attention to how that request is received.

What if we cannot get to the site ourselves?

Commission somebody credible to go with your agenda rather than a generic checklist, and ask for photographs of the specific equipment, the rework area and the record system rather than a scored report. Follow it with a live video walk where you choose the direction and ask questions as they occur to you. Neither substitutes fully for standing there, so keep the initial commitment small and plan a real visit before tooling or an exclusive arrangement is committed.

Does a strong factory visit prove they can build our product?

No. A visit tells you how the business is run, how disciplined the floor is and how people respond under mild pressure. It cannot tell you whether this shop can hold your tolerances, handle your material, or reach your test yield, because that requires demonstration on your part with your specification. Treat the visit and the technical proving exercise as separate gates, and be wary of a favourable impression from a well-run plant quietly substituting for evidence you never collected.