Pharma Techexplained
Glossary

Vendor audit

The structured assessment of a supplier's quality system, deciding how much of their testing you can lean on.

The vendor audit, whether on-site, remote or questionnaire-based by risk, establishes whether a supplier's development and testing practices deserve trust. The answer directly sizes your own validation effort: solid supplier evidence means you verify intended use rather than re-prove the product.

CSA and GAMP 5 both push this leverage explicitly. The waste of two organizations testing the same standard functionality twice was always rational only as ritual; a documented supplier assessment is what makes skipping it defensible.