Sourcing reference
Factory audits and social-compliance evidence in apparel sourcing
Social-compliance evidence comes in several forms and they are routinely treated as interchangeable. A platform membership, an audit report and a certificate answer different questions, and none of them tells you that a factory is compliant today.
Ask a supplier whether they are socially compliant and you will usually get the name of a scheme back. That is a reasonable answer to an unreasonable question, because none of the names is a compliance status. They are different kinds of evidence, produced by different mechanisms, and reading them properly starts with knowing which kind you are holding.
Membership, audit and certification are not the same thing
Three kinds of evidence
Each answers a different question, and none of them is a statement about conditions on the day you are reading it.
Membership means an organisation participates in a system. It establishes that they are in it. It says nothing about conditions at any particular site, and it is not an assessment result.
An audit is an assessment of a named site, on the days it was conducted, against a methodology and a code of conduct. It produces findings and corrective actions rather than a pass mark, and the presence of findings is normal rather than damning.
Certification is conformity assessed against a standard and issued by an accredited certification body, with the standard's own ongoing requirements attached. It is a different instrument from an audit report, which is why the distinction is worth holding on to rather than collapsing into a general sense that a factory has been checked.
The systems you will actually be shown
| SMETA | amfori BSCI | SA8000 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | Sedex | amfori | Social Accountability International |
| What it is | An audit methodology | A monitoring and audit system | A certifiable standard |
| Produces | An audit report with findings and corrective actions | An audit result expressed as a rating against the Code of Conduct | Certification by an accredited certification body |
| Is it a certification? | No | No | Yes |
| Who assesses | Sedex-approved Affiliate Audit Companies | Auditors operating within the amfori system | Certification bodies accredited for the standard |
Each has its own page: SMETA, amfori BSCI and SA8000. The comparison above is deliberately limited to fields that are genuinely comparable. Validity periods are not among them, because reassessment expectations differ by system and by the buyer's own policy rather than following one industry rule.
What a social audit is not
Three separate things get filed under compliance, and a document from one of them is not evidence for another.
| Kind of evidence | Answers | Where it is covered |
|---|---|---|
| Social compliance | Working conditions, labour standards, health and safety, and management systems at a site | This section |
| Material certification | What a material is and where it came from, through a certified chain | Certified materials |
| Product quality control | Whether the goods conform to the specification | Quality control and incoming fabric inspection |
A social audit is not a quality inspection: an auditor assessing working hours is not measuring garments. An incoming fabric inspection is not a social audit. And a material certificate says nothing about the conditions in the factory that made the garment, which is the bridge worth being explicit about because both are commonly described simply as compliance documents.
Which site, and which processes
Evidence attaches to a site rather than to a company name, and that distinction does real work. A group may operate several production sites, and an assessment of one is not evidence about another. When a buyer receives a report, the first thing to reconcile is whether the site named on it is the site their goods will be made in.
Subcontracting raises the same question one step out. Where part of a product is made or decorated elsewhere, a buyer with a social-compliance requirement needs to know which processes leave the site, whether their own policy requires those processes to be covered, and whether approval is needed. Requirements differ between buyers, and it is not the case that every outsourced specialist process must always sit under the same methodology.
Confirming the actual production site and the relevant subcontracted processes is part of supplier qualification, which is set out in qualifying and approving a supplier. The wider vetting sequence is in how to find a reliable clothing manufacturer; this section is the social-evidence layer of that same exercise.
Why buyers are asking for more of this
Requests for social evidence have grown because brands increasingly have to account for their supply chains to customers, to retail partners and under developing due-diligence expectations in several markets. That is useful context for why the question arrives, and it should not be over-read.
An audit report is one evidence input. It is not a determination that any particular legal obligation has been met, and no scheme in this section presents itself as one. What satisfies a specific regulatory or customer requirement is a matter for the party carrying that obligation, assessed against the requirement itself.
What to do with a report when you get one
Much of the value in this subject is in reading the document rather than in collecting it. A report with open corrective actions is not automatically a problem, and a report with none is not automatically reassuring if it is three years old or covers a different site.
The workflow, including what the corrective action cycle means and how to tell an informative report from a decorative one, is in reading a factory audit report.
One practical point on access: audit reports are generally not public documents. They are typically shared through the system that produced them, under the sharing arrangements that system operates, and often on terms agreed between the site and the buyer. Expecting to find one published is usually a misunderstanding of how the systems work rather than evidence of reticence.
Where Voyager fits
When a buyer has a specific social-compliance requirement, it should be identified during supplier qualification rather than inferred from unrelated material or product certifications. The production site involved and any subcontracted processes relevant to that requirement are confirmed as part of the same conversation.
Buyer questions
What is the difference between a social audit and a certification?
An audit assesses a named site on the days it was conducted, against a methodology and a code, and produces findings and corrective actions. Certification is conformity assessed against a standard and issued by an accredited certification body, with the standard's own ongoing requirements. They are different instruments, and an audit report is not a certificate.
Does passing an audit mean a factory is compliant?
It means the site was assessed against a methodology on particular days and the findings were recorded. It is evidence at a point in time. No audit establishes that conditions will remain the same afterwards, that every process is covered, or that a subcontracted step is included, which is why buyers ask about the date, the site and the scope rather than only about the existence of a report.
Is a social audit the same as a quality inspection?
No. A social audit assesses working conditions, health and safety and management systems at a site. A quality inspection assesses whether goods conform to a specification. Neither substitutes for the other, and a supplier who can produce one may still need to be asked for the other.
Are factory audit reports public?
Generally not. They are usually shared through the system that produced them, under that system's sharing arrangements and often on terms agreed between the site and the buyer requesting them. That is normal practice rather than an indication that something is being withheld.
Raise the requirement at qualification
If a programme carries a specific social-compliance requirement, tell us what it is and which markets it comes from. It is a supplier-qualification question, and it is better answered before a specification than after one.
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