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A useful audit skips the showroom and checks four things: whether equipment and processes are complete in house (casting, filing, setting, polishing, plating, or outsourced), whether material accounts reconcile (silver in and out, loss records), what the rework and scrap rates are, and whether operators follow process cards. Press hard on plating: an outsourced plating line means neither lead time nor coating quality is under the factorys control, and peak season exposes it first.
Pre-shipment inspection usually follows ISO 2859-1: critical defects zero, major defects AQL 2.5, minor defects AQL 4.0 for consumer goods. In practice you fix lot size, sample code letter, sample size, and accept and reject numbers. For example a lot of 500 at general inspection level II gives a sample of 50, accepting up to 3 majors. Sampling must be random across stations and sublots; pulling one tray is not sampling.
Common requirements for EU and US channels: nickel release, referencing EN 1811 with EN 12472 for wear simulation and a stricter limit for piercings; lead and cadmium content, referencing CPSIA limits with the tightest thresholds for childrens jewelry; plus coating thickness and adhesion. Testing should come from an accredited third-party lab and the report must map to a specific style and lot. Standards and methods get revised, so confirm the currently applicable version rather than relying on a report from several years ago.
Quality cannot be saved by one final inspection. Use three: before bulk (silver alloy composition and first-article wax approval), during production (compare first and middle articles, check dimensions and stone security), and before shipment (AQL sampling plus plating appearance plus packaging and barcode verification). Problems found at the first two checkpoints can still be fixed; at the last one you can only reject or accept with concession.
Focus on three places: whether findings are observations or critical items, whether corrective actions carry an owner and a deadline, and whether the previous findings were actually closed. A pass certificate with no detail is of limited value. What actually helps is capacity, outsourcing ratio, rework rate, and how the last customer complaint was handled.
Typically one to two days covering a site walk, document review and worker interviews. For capacity assessment and process traceability, allow two days and share the checklist in advance.
An acceptable quality level of 2.5 percent for major defects. After mapping lot size to sample size, accept at or below the Ac number and reject at the Re number.
Reports map to a specific style and lot; changes in design, material or supplier require retesting. For EU channels, refresh per batch or at an agreed interval.
Yes. The usual path is a buyer-commissioned inspection on site, with the factory providing lot details, material records and samples.
