Not all factories possess the required facilities for making certain products - for example creating prints, washings or embroideries etc. In these cases, the suppliers can outsource specific tasks to so called processing factories. This is considered subcontracting and must be announced to H&M. We require that all processing factories are approved by our auditors. After approval, we approach the processing factory in the same way as any other factory making products for and include them in our Full Audit Programme. A processing factory is often contracted by more than one suppliers. In some cases, one factory can be both a manufacturing factory and a processing factory. For example, when a manufacturing factory has certain production processes like in-house washing and offers this service to other manufacturing factories.