The quotation is competitive, the samples are acceptable, and now someone has to walk the floor before the deposit goes out. A first visit compresses into two or three hours what should really take a week, so the order in which you look — and what each station tells you that the office tour will not — decides whether the visit was worth the flight.
This is the walk itself: what to ask for at the gate, what a production line tells you against the capacity you were quoted, and where a Vietnamese factory’s own compliance paperwork sits.
💬 Want someone who reads the paperwork in Vietnamese standing next to you on the walk? Tell us what you are buying and we will join the visit.
What do you ask for before you walk the floor?
The registration record and the export history, because a factory that has actually shipped your kind of goods before leaves a paper trail that a factory only claiming to has not.
Confirming the enterprise code against the national registry, and reading whether the registration covers manufacturing or only trading, is its own subject — see how to verify a Vietnamese supplier remotely for the registry lookups and what each field settles. Do that check before you travel, not on the day, so the visit is spent on what a document cannot show you.
Once you are there, ask for what the registry cannot: a packing list or a bill of lading from a recent shipment of a comparable product, with the buyer’s name redacted if they prefer. A factory that has exported the category before can usually produce one inside the meeting; a factory that cannot is not disqualified, but the order carries more of the specification risk, and your first order should be small enough to absorb the finding either way.
Does the production line match the capacity you were quoted?
Walk the line that would actually run your order, on the day you visit, and compare what is running against what was quoted — not a demonstration line kept clean for visitors.
A quotation states a capacity figure; the floor either supports it or it does not, and the tell is rarely a lie so much as an unstated assumption. Look for:
- The line your product category would actually run on, not a showroom line near the entrance.
- Whether the machines on that line match the process the quotation describes — a line built for large batches quoted against your small first order behaves differently once your job is squeezed between other customers’ work.
- How much of the floor is idle. An empty factory is not necessarily a bad sign — it can mean spare capacity for you — but it is worth asking why, plainly, rather than assuming.
- Work-in-progress on the floor: whose job tags are on it, and whether the date on the tag is recent.
Where the answer to any of these is vague, ask for the production schedule for the coming two weeks. A schedule that exists and is legible is a stronger signal than a verbal capacity number.
💬 Reading a Vietnamese production schedule and a quotation side by side is easier with someone who does it daily — see what our sourcing service covers on a factory visit.
Is any part of the job going to another workshop?
Ask directly which processes stay in this building and which leave it, because an undisclosed subcontracting step changes who controls your quality and your lead time.
Subcontracting a specific process — plating, heat treatment, a particular finishing step — is common and is not itself a problem; a factory that names its subcontractors and can describe the handover is usually the safer one to work with, not the riskier one. The problem is a process presented as in-house that is not. Ask, for each stage in your process route:
- Which stage happens in this building.
- Which stage leaves the building, to which named partner, and how the part travels there and back.
- Who inspects the part when it returns from a subcontractor, and against what document.
A quotation that already lists this — see how to compare Vietnamese supplier quotations for the line on subcontracting split — makes this part of the visit a confirmation rather than a discovery.
What does the QC station actually check?
Ask to see the inspection record for a job that shipped recently, against the document that defines what “pass” means for that job — not a description of the process in the abstract.
A quality-control station tells you three things worth separating:
| What to look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Where inspection happens on the line — incoming material, in-process, final | Whether a defect is caught before or after value has been added to the part |
| The document the inspector checks against | Whether “inspected” means checked against your specification or against the factory’s own house standard |
| A completed inspection record from a recent job, with a date and a name | Whether the station produces a real record or a form filled in after the fact |
| Rejected or reworked parts set aside on the floor | Whether a reject is tracked and separated, or mixed back in |
Setting the inspection standard, and who signs off against it, belongs in the purchase order rather than left to be discovered at the QC station — see setting up pre-shipment inspection with AQL sampling for how to write that into the order.
What does the factory’s own compliance paperwork show?
Ask for the working-hours and overtime records for the line you would use, and check them against the limits the Labour Code actually sets — a factory that can produce this paperwork on request is telling you something about how it is run generally.
Article 105 of the Labour Code No. 45/2019/QH14 sets normal working hours at no more than 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week. Article 107 caps overtime at 50% of a day’s normal hours, at 40 hours a month, and — subject to written employee consent — at 200 hours a year, extended to 300 hours a year for a defined list of sectors including manufacturing, textiles and electronics. Checked against the published text on 25 September 2026; confirm the current figures before you rely on them, since implementing decrees have been amended since the Code was passed.
You are not auditing the factory’s labour law compliance as a formal exercise — that is a specialist engagement with its own scope. What is useful on a first visit is simpler: ask whether time records exist, whether they are kept in a form the factory can show you, and whether a Vietnamese-speaking staff member can explain how overtime is authorised. A factory with no answer to that question is one where other records are also likely to be informal.
Is the fire safety position current?
Ask to see the fire safety design appraisal or the most recent inspection record for the building, because a building operating without one is a building an authority could close without notice.
Decree No. 136/2020/ND-CP, implementing the Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting and its 2013 amendment, sets out which categories of premises need a fire prevention and fighting design appraisal before operation, and the decree has itself been amended since 2020. Checked against the published text on 25 September 2026; the exact document a given building needs depends on its scale and category, so ask what the factory holds rather than assuming a single form applies everywhere.
On the walk, look for what a document cannot fake as easily as it can be filed: extinguishers with a current inspection tag, clear aisles to marked exits, and a fire-safety noticeboard that is specific to that building rather than a generic poster. A building that cannot produce any fire-safety document at all is a stop, not a question to raise later.
The visit checklist
Work down this list on the day; a gap in one row is a question for the next email, not necessarily a reason to walk away.
| Area | What to ask for or look at | Where a gap is acceptable | Where a gap is a stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration | Registry lookup already done before travel; export history at the factory | No export history in your exact category | The registered address and the building do not match, unverified as an administrative rename |
| Production line | The line for your product, running today; the two-week schedule | An idle line with a plain explanation | A “demonstration only” line presented as the production line |
| Subcontracting | Named partners for each outsourced process | A subcontracted step, disclosed | An in-house process that turns out to be subcontracted, discovered rather than told |
| QC | A recent inspection record against a named document | House standard used for undefined specification points | No inspection record exists for any recent job |
| Labour basics | Time records for the line, an explanation of overtime authorisation | Records kept but informally organised | No time records exist at all |
| Fire safety | Current design appraisal or inspection record; extinguisher tags; clear exits | An older document being renewed | No fire-safety document of any kind |
What none of this replaces
A single visit tells you what the building and its paperwork look like today — not how the factory performs under your specification, your tolerance, or your delivery pressure three orders from now.
Reserve judgement on price and capability until you have set the sample stages that actually prove the part — proto, fit and pre-production sample approval — and written the inspection and payment terms that carry the relationship past the first shipment: pre-shipment inspection and AQL sampling and supplier payment terms from Vietnam.
💬 First visit coming up and want a second set of eyes on the floor? Start with the factory and the product, or see how our sourcing service supports factory visits.
Frequently asked questions
1. Should I visit before or after the first sample is approved?
After a first sample exists is usually more useful — you have something concrete to ask the line about, rather than a specification on paper. If the order is large enough to justify the trip regardless, visiting earlier is reasonable too; the checklist above works either way.
2. The factory only agreed to a video call, not a visit. Is that a red flag?
Not necessarily, particularly for a small first order or a long distance. A live video walk covering the same stations — the line, the QC station, the fire-safety board — gets you most of what a physical visit does; what it cannot show is the smell, noise and pace of the floor, which some buyers weight heavily and others do not.
3. What if the factory has no export experience at all, but everything else checks out?
That is a real gap, not automatically a disqualifier. Weight it against your order size: a first order small enough to absorb a documentation mistake is a reasonable way to test a capable factory that has only sold domestically before.
4. How do I tell a genuine subcontracting arrangement from a shell company reselling someone else’s production?
Ask who owns the equipment on the line, who employs the operators, and whether the same answer comes from the factory’s own staff and from the subcontractor if you speak to them separately. A trading company that discloses it manages production at a partner factory, rather than owning one, is not the same problem — see the note on trading companies in verifying a Vietnamese supplier remotely.
5. Do I need a professional social-compliance audit for a small first order?
Not usually. A full social-compliance audit is a separate paid engagement with its own scope and reporting format, generally justified once order volumes or buyer requirements call for it. The checklist here is what a buyer can reasonably assess on an ordinary factory visit.
Sources: National Assembly of Vietnam, Labour Code No. 45/2019/QH14 (Articles 105, 107); Government of Vietnam, Decree No. 136/2020/ND-CP on the Law on Fire Prevention and Fighting. Checked on 25 September 2026.