A wire manufacturing company contacted us to carry out forensic audit of its manufacturing plant. It used to manufacture wires for its own brand of automobile products. The manufacturing operations were doing well but it wanted a detailed audit carried out.

During the study that was carried out, the detailed audit revealed that the plant’s metrics were comparable to the industry standards. However, during the forensic investigation, it was observed that ‘normal loss limit’ was defined by the Plant Head and not according to the performance of the machine. There was also a variation found in the plant’s normal loss limit when compared to another. The actual efficient of the machine, it was then found out, was higher than the benchmark and losses during the process were minimised.

During physical monitoring of the manufacturing process, it was noted that the actual normal loss was much less than the prescribed limit. The daily normal loss of copper was also below the past year’s recorded data. The consumption of PVC was also less than the recorded consumption of the last one year.

It was confirmed with empirical data that there was more copper wire being produced than the reported quantity. The Plant Head along with a few people were managing normal losses in the books and selling the excess quantity in the market. The involvement of the Plant Head and some other employees was confirmed in the extended study that was carried out.