Compliance Audit Checklist For Garment Industry

Compliance audit checklists are used by buyers of garments industry products to assess quality. This tool helps them verify that their supplier meets regulatory requirements.

Compliance in the garment industry helps safeguard workers’ rights, provide a safe work environment and promote ethical business practices while simultaneously decreasing staff turnover rates and increasing productivity and efficiency.

1. Workplace Safety
Workplace safety is of utmost importance in garment factories. This involves proper use and management of machinery, tools, equipment and the overall working environment – including proper fire safety training, electrical wiring standards and creating clutter-free workspaces for employees. Furthermore, inspecting factory cleanliness as well as employee conduct are vital parts of factory operations.

At a technical audit, garment buyers establish quality guidelines to help their supplier pass compliance inspection. All required dimensions including fabric weight and trims as well as packing instructions will be checked for conformance during this phase of inspection.

QC managers must ensure that fabric and trim purchases meet buyer specifications, are properly stored, and follow all incoming raw material spec sheets. In addition to verifying colors using light boxes, checking GSM/weight ratios/colorfastness/dimensional stability/button pulling strength/wash quality as part of this responsibility is also paramount.

2. Environment
For workers’ safety, their workplace must be clean and well-lit with adequate ventilation. Furthermore, it should contain a functioning fire alarm, emergency exits, and temperature controls that work optimally.

Factory owners should abide by the SA8000 standard, an international labor standard established by a non-profit organization and which includes guidelines regarding child labor, forced labor and workers’ right to refuse any employment opportunities.

Garments buyers implement quality management systems (QMSs) for their factories and conduct regular technical audits to ensure the garments meet buyer standards. A technical audit typically covers various items such as fabric inspection process review, sampling procedures review and fusing machine temperatures analysis; additionally it should also check to make sure all materials necessary for producing high-quality garments are present such as GSM content, shade band width measurement etc.

3. Health & Safety
Garment manufacturers must ensure workers do not face any health and safety risks in order to retain its workforce efficiently and reliably. Furthermore, this helps build brand loyalty and consumer trust within their organization.

Technical audit checklists cover all quality parameters within a garment manufacturing facility from raw material storage to final shipment of finished products, from reviewing catalogues, samples and certificates to inspecting crucial processes such as fusing, stitching and attaching accessories.

The checklist covers other quality related issues as well, such as housekeeping, fabric storage area cleanliness, machine maintenance logs, broken needle register and policy on preserving rejected goods. In addition, this review examines management systems to ensure employees are fairly compensated with no abuse or discrimination as well as freedom of association being allowed – including local labor laws and international social compliance standards.

4. Quality
Quality is at the center of any garment industry and essential to customer satisfaction. Without it, brands cannot create and sustain positive brand images and generate long-term business revenues.

Garment buyers often conduct technical audits when purchasing garments:

An effective inspection system must ensure all incoming raw materials meet their required specifications, such as testing the color of fabric and yarn with light boxes or identifying rejected products.

Factory should ensure stitching quality matches approved sample. No open seams or jump stitches should appear and all prints and embroideries should adhere to buyer design instructions. Furthermore, all trims must be attached correctly.

Other essential criteria include maintaining a sanitary factory environment, conducting adequate housekeeping procedures and properly storing and labelling fabric and yarn by shade and color for identification purposes, keeping records of equipment usage, using sharp tools safely, as well as registered hazardous waste disposal.