How do you vet a CNC machining supplier in Vietnam?

How do you confirm a Vietnamese supplier is a registered company?

Ask for the enterprise registration certificate, then look the company up yourself on Vietnam’s National Business Registration Portal and compare the two.

The certificate is usually issued in Vietnamese, so expect the legal name to differ from the trading name on the website or the email signature. That is normal; what matters is that the legal name, the enterprise code and the head-office address on the certificate match what the National Business Registration Portal returns when you search it. Under Vietnamese enterprise law the enterprise code also serves as the tax code, so the same number should appear on invoices and export paperwork.

Check three things beyond existence. First, the registered business lines should include manufacturing, not only trading; a company registered purely for trade may be a broker placing your order elsewhere. Second, the registration status should be active, not suspended or in dissolution. Third, the address on the certificate should be a place you can see: ask for a live video walk from the gate to the machines, and compare the street, the signage and the building with the registered address. A foreign-invested company usually also holds an investment registration certificate, which is worth asking for because it names the investor.

Finally, make sure the entity you vet is the one that signs the contract and issues the commercial invoice, since groups often run a trading company alongside the factory.

What should a sample CMM or inspection report show?

A usable report ties every measured value to a numbered characteristic on the drawing and states the instrument, its calibration status and the datum setup used.

Ask for a real report from a past job, with the customer’s name and part number redacted, rather than a brochure page. Read it the way your own incoming inspector would:

• Balloon numbers. Each line should map to a ballooned characteristic, so you can see that the whole drawing was measured, not only the easy diameters.
• Nominal, tolerance, measured value and deviation on every line, with a clear pass or fail. A report that lists only “OK” cannot be audited.
• Datum alignment. The CMM program should align on the datums the drawing names. A position or profile result measured from a convenient face instead of the datum reference frame is not the tolerance you specified.
• Instrument and calibration. The report should name the machine or gauge and link to a calibration record. NIST defines traceability as an unbroken, documented chain of calibrations, each contributing to measurement uncertainty, so ask whose laboratory calibrated the CMM and whether that laboratory is accredited. CMM performance verification is usually described per ISO 10360-2.
• Operator, date and part serial or lot, so the report belongs to specific parts.

If the shop has no CMM, that is not automatically a problem for simple turned parts measured with calibrated gauges. It becomes one when your drawing uses position, profile or runout callouts that cannot be checked with hand tools.

What should a process audit of a machine shop cover?

Follow one job from incoming bar or casting to packed parts, and ask to see the record that each step leaves behind.

An audit, remote or on site, is most useful when it follows material rather than a questionnaire. Ask to see, for a recent job:

• Incoming material. The mill or foundry certificate for the lot, and how the lot is identified on the shop floor so that certificate follows the parts. For steel and aluminum bar, an EN 10204 type 3.1 inspection certificate is the common level to request.
• Job traveler or routing. A document that lists operations, programs and revisions, so an old drawing revision cannot be machined by mistake.
• First-piece and in-process checks. Who approves the first part after a setup or tool change, and where that approval is recorded.
• Calibration. A register of gauges with due dates, and labels on the gauges that match it. Pick two gauges at random and trace them to the register.
• Nonconforming parts. A marked, separated area for rejected parts and a record of what happened to them: scrap, rework or concession.
• Corrective action. One closed corrective action from a real complaint, from root cause through the change that fixed it.

Ask directly which operations happen under the supplier’s roof and which go out to other shops, such as heat treatment, plating or grinding. Outside operations are normal; what matters is that the supplier names them, controls them and includes them in its records.

What does the full vetting checklist look like?

The table below collects each check, the evidence to ask for and the reference behind it, in the order most buyers run them.

Run the first two rows before sharing drawings, and the rest once an NDA is in place.

Using this checklist on Saola

The same checks apply to us, and we would rather you ran them. Saola Manufacturing is a brand of Aximora Global Trading Co., Ltd., registered in Ho Chi Minh City in 2026. Our CNC turning and CNC milling run at our lead partner plant, T.K Viet Nam Precision Company Limited, registered in 2017. Die casting, stamping, surface finishing and six further processes, from sand casting to injection molding, are placed with partner factories we manage, and the quote states the production site and country of origin. Our ISO 9001 certification is in progress, not held. To start with a test part, send the drawing through the quote form or to rfq@saolamfg.com.