How do we prepare for customer audits on people matters?

The supplier quality engineer stops at the leak test station on the second shift. She asks the operator his name, then asks what he does when the tester shows a fail. He points at the red bin and says he calls the line leader. Good. Then she asks the plant head to show his training record for this station. The file has a joining form and a safety induction sheet. There is no station sign-off. He has run that tester for four months.

That is how most people findings arise in a customer audit. The auditor does not read your HR policy first. She picks a person at a machine and works backwards. Plants on the automotive components hub list audits among the moments when HR gaps surface. The answer is to make the trail real every day, so the visit becomes a check rather than a scramble.

• Station authorisation. Who may run each operation, above all those carrying the customer's critical-characteristic symbol, and proof of each sign-off.
• Relief and absentee cover. Who stood in when the regular operator was absent, and whether the stand-in's matrix cell showed a sign-off.
• Inspector competence. Training on gauges and defect catalogues, boundary sample familiarity and, for visual checks, a periodic eyesight test on file.
• Induction for every joiner. Safety, product awareness and the reaction plan, dated and signed before the person worked alone.
• Contract and temporary workers. The same training trail as permanent staff, even when an agency or contractor supplied them.
• Shift handover. A signed sheet showing quality holds, die or mould problems and open concerns passed from one crew to the next.
• Role descriptions. A short statement of who owns which check, and who may pull the andon and halt the cell.

1. 1

   Pick three names at random from today's roster

   Take one permanent operator, one relief or contract worker and one inspector. Random matters; the best-kept file proves nothing.

2. 2

   Follow each from gate to station

   Joining date, induction sheet, station training, the sign-off and who signed, any refresher after a process change. Note every missing link.

3. 3

   Check the skill matrix against reality

   Walk the line with the matrix in hand. Is each person at a station they are marked as qualified for? Relief operators fail this most often.

4. 4

   Ask the floor the auditor's questions

   What do you do when the gauge goes red? Where is the work instruction? Who do you call? Answers should match the paper.

5. 5

   Fix the routine, not just the file

   If sign-offs are missing, change who signs and when. A gap closed only on paper reopens before the next visit.

• Show me today's relief board. Who takes the torque station if this operator goes home sick?
• When was the poka-yoke verification done at shift start, and who initialled it?
• A die change happened at midnight. Where did the night crew note it, and did the day crew read it?
• This joiner started last Monday. Where is his induction sheet, and which station is he cleared for?
• Who released the lot on yesterday's hold tag, and on what evidence?

Read your customer's supplier quality manual. Retention periods for training and inspection records are often written there, and they differ between customers. Whatever the period, the record for anyone working today must be complete. Store it where a supervisor can pull it in minutes. Employee information management is the discipline of keeping that trail in one place rather than across three cupboards.

The quality head leads, but the shift supervisor should answer questions about his own crew. Auditors notice when only one manager can speak and everyone else waits. Brief two or three supervisors on what will be asked. Do not script operators. A parroted answer collapses at the auditor's second question; an honest pause does not.

Your customer audits your plant, not the contractor. Station training for a contract worker is your job, whoever pays the wage. Keep their induction and sign-offs in your own register, with the contractor's name noted. If they rotate often, that is a finding waiting to happen, so tell production planning which stations need a stable crew.

On a normal day the regular crew stands at its usual stations. On audit day a regular is away at a family wedding, and the supervisor moves a floater from the deburring bench to the crimp press. Nobody checks the matrix first. Keep a relief board at the line office showing, for each station, the two or three named stand-ins already signed off. The supervisor picks from that board and nowhere else. It costs a sheet of card and saves the most common finding in the book.

Treat it like a quality complaint. Find the cause, change the routine, check it worked. A finding on training records usually traces to role design: nobody owned the sign-off. A clear owner for each check, written into the role descriptions for brake component plants and similar plants, closes the loop.

Repeat the three-name trace monthly, rotating through all three shifts in turn. One hour a month catches drift before a customer does. Customer audits expose HR gaps covers the wider pattern and its fix. For the history of one plant that lost an argument over a missing file, read the training record nobody could produce.