Supplier Qualification Checklist: 40 Questions Before You Sign

Choosing a contract manufacturer is one of the highest-stakes decisions a hardware company makes. A bad supplier can sink margins, leak intellectual property, delay launches by quarters, and — as many brands learned during the last wave of China exits — strand you with tooling you can't easily retrieve. A great supplier, on the other hand, becomes a multi-year growth partner.

As US companies continue relocating production from China to Mexico and the United States, we at Reshore see the same pattern over and over: buyers rush the qualification step, skip uncomfortable questions, and pay for it in year two. This FAQ-style checklist compiles the 40 questions we recommend every sourcing team ask before signing a manufacturing agreement — especially for plastics and injection molding programs.

How Should You Use This Checklist?

Treat this as a structured supplier audit checklist, not a script. Send the first tier of questions as a written RFI, reserve the operational and financial questions for an on-site visit, and hold the commercial questions for contract negotiation. If you're unsure which sourcing document to send when, our primer on RFQ vs. RFP vs. RFI in Manufacturing breaks down the distinctions.

Score each answer on a 1–5 scale. Any supplier that can't cleanly answer questions in the Quality, IP, or Financial sections should be disqualified — regardless of price.

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Section 1: Company Background and Stability (Questions 1–6)

Vendor vetting starts with making sure the company will still exist in three years.

1. How long has the company operated under current ownership, and who are the ultimate beneficial owners?
2. What is your annual revenue, and what percentage comes from your top three customers? (Concentration above 40% on any one customer is a red flag.)
3. Can you share audited financial statements or a recent bank reference?
4. What is your employee headcount, and what has turnover looked like over the past 24 months?
5. Do you operate multiple facilities, and is there a documented business continuity plan?
6. Are there any active lawsuits, liens, or regulatory actions against the company?

Section 2: Manufacturing Capabilities and Capacity (Questions 7–13)

The goal here is to separate marketing claims from production reality.

7. What processes do you perform in-house versus subcontract? (For plastics, this means injection molding, overmolding, insert molding, secondary operations, assembly, and finishing.)
8. List every injection molding press by tonnage, shot size, manufacturer, and year installed.
9. What is your current capacity utilization by shift, and how much headroom exists for our program?
10. What resins do you run regularly, and which are you certified or experienced with? Our Glossary of Plastics Manufacturing Terms and Resin Codes is a useful reference when comparing answers.
11. Do you have cleanroom capabilities, and to what ISO class?
12. What is your typical lead time from PO to first shipment for a transferred tool?
13. How do you handle scalability if our volumes double in 12 months?

Section 3: Quality Systems (Questions 14–20)

Quality is where most supplier relationships quietly fail. Pair this section with a formal Quality Control Checklist for Nearshore Manufacturing.

14. Which quality certifications do you hold — ISO 9001, IATF 16949, ISO 13485, AS9100? Request current certificates, not expired ones.
15. What is your documented PPAP or FAI process?
16. What measurement and inspection equipment is on-site (CMM, vision systems, gage R&R cadence)?
17. What is your average PPM (parts per million) defect rate across the past 12 months?
18. How do you handle non-conformance — 8D reports, corrective actions, customer notification timelines?
19. Can we see your last three customer scorecards or audit findings?
20. Will you allow source inspection or a resident quality engineer on-site?

Section 4: Tooling, Engineering, and IP (Questions 21–26)

This section matters most for companies moving molds out of China. Also review our FAQ on Tooling Transfer, IP, and Supplier Transition from China before signing anything.

21. Who retains ownership of tooling, fixtures, and process documentation? The answer must be unambiguously you.
22. Do you have experience receiving and re-qualifying tools transferred from overseas? Ask for references.
23. What is your mold maintenance program — shot count tracking, PM intervals, spare components?
24. Will you sign an NDA before detailed technical discussions, and an IP assignment agreement at contract?
25. How do you segregate competitive customer programs within your facility?
26. Do you employ any engineers or operators with ties to competing brands we should disclose?

Risk Area	Low-Risk Answer	Red Flag
Tool ownership	Customer owns 100%, documented in contract	"We co-own" or "standard industry practice"
IP protection	Signed NDA + IP assignment, segregated cells	Verbal assurances only
Data handling	NIST 800-171 or SOC 2 aligned	No written policy

Section 5: Supply Chain and Raw Materials (Questions 27–31)

27. Where are your primary resin suppliers located, and do you hold safety stock?
28. What percentage of your inputs currently come from China, and what is your plan if tariffs change?
29. How do you verify resin certifications (COA, lot traceability)?
30. What is your policy on material substitutions, and who approves them?
31. Do you have USMCA compliance expertise for certificates of origin?

Section 6: Commercial Terms and Communication (Questions 32–36)

32. What are your standard payment terms, and is there flexibility for net-45 or net-60?
33. How is pricing structured — open book, cost-plus, or fixed?
34. What is your policy on annual cost reductions or productivity sharing?
35. Who will be our day-to-day program manager, and what is their English (or Spanish) fluency?
36. What ERP and communication platforms do you use for PO, forecast, and shipment visibility?

Section 7: Compliance, Sustainability, and Social Responsibility (Questions 37–40)

37. Are you compliant with RoHS, REACH, Prop 65, and relevant industry-specific regulations? For regulated sectors, see our Industrial Equipment Plastic Parts Compliance FAQ.
38. What are your labor practices — working hours, wages relative to regional average, third-party audits (Sedex, SMETA)?
39. What environmental permits do you hold, and do you track Scope 1 and 2 emissions?
40. Are you willing to sign our supplier code of conduct as part of the master agreement?

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What Should You Do With the Answers?

Three simple rules:

• Verify, don't trust. Every certification, reference, and financial claim should be validated independently. Certificates are easy to fabricate; a 20-minute call to a named reference is harder to fake.
• Go on-site. A two-day audit visit will reveal more than 40 questions ever can. Watch shift changes, look at the break room, ask a machine operator how long they've worked there.
• Score consistently. Use the same rubric across every candidate so the final decision is data-driven, not relationship-driven.

Where Reshore Fits In

Running this 40-question gauntlet across 8–12 candidate suppliers is slow, expensive, and — without deep manufacturing expertise — easy to get wrong. The Reshore platform accelerates this by pre-vetting manufacturers in our Mexico Plastic Manufacturing Hub Directory and matching your specifications to verified plants that already meet the baseline criteria in this checklist.

If you're evaluating a move from China and want help applying this framework to real candidates, book a reshoring assessment or join the waitlist to access AI-powered supplier matching across Mexico and the US.

A signature at the bottom of an MSA is easy. Earning the confidence to put one there is the work — and it starts with asking all 40 questions before, not after.