Manufacturing and Quality Control blog

No one likes product defects, including your supplier. How can you, as an importer, make sure you're addressing product quality issues directly?

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice

How can you afford to spend a little extra on inspections to ensure the quality of the finished goods? With these five ways to cut inspection costs.

Topics: Product Inspection

You don’t want inspection to cost you an arm and a leg. Should you merge SKUs for product inspection or keep them separate? A commonly used method to simplify QC and lower its cost to you, the buyer, is to combine SKUs for product inspection. If you combine SKUs you will typically see lower inspection costs and faster reporting. But that doesn’t mean combining SKUs is always the best move for assuring the quality and standards of your product.

Topics: Product Inspection

How often should you visit your suppliers? The short answer: Not very often. Why? Doesn’t visiting your supplier offer you valuable insight and an opportunity to voice any concerns to the supplier face-to-face? Visiting can be valuable just to “give face” to a Chinese supplier and factory, an important cultural and societal sign of respect. However, do not expect to gain anything of manufacturing value by visiting for than once or twice a year.

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice

Transparency in manufacturing can make or break a retailer or distributor’s image. Social compliance audits are one of the most powerful tools used to ensure a factory is abiding by local laws and following an ethical and moral business culture. There are many areas that a social compliance audit can clarify about your factory. Here are the 4 most common issues they can bring to light regarding your supplier.

Topics: Social Compliance

As a buyer half a world away, there is nothing more frustrating than your supplier’s factory manager giving you a hard time with production. This situation may happen more often than you’d like. But before you decide to play hardball and threaten to take your business elsewhere, take a deep breath and relax. With this in mind, here are three tips to help you deal with a difficult factory manager.

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice

How can you be confident about working with a new supplier without carrying out an audit or, at the very least, visiting the factory? Unlike a social compliance audit, which focuses heavily on working conditions, a supplier review mainly evaluates a supplier’s quality management system and relies on ISO 9001 standards. Here are five key findings that a buyer can expect from a professionally-conducted supplier review.

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice