Manufacturing and Quality Control blog

When importers are selecting among an endless list of possibilities, factory location can often take a back seat to factors like price, product quality and shipping deadline. But what if we told you that factory location can, and almost always does, greatly impact all of those factors and more?

Topics: Sourcing

If you’ve ever taken a trip to Southern China, there’s a good chance you’ve flown into Hong Kong International Airport on your way through. You may have even had to deal with your fair share of headaches at the border crossing. So what is the most time-saving and all-around best bang-for-your-buck method of getting to your hotel in Shenzhen from Hong Kong Airport?

Topics: Travel Tips & Advice

Working factory direct sounds like a good idea, right? Well, not necessarily. There are a few considerations to make before deciding if that is the best option, especially when there are existing relationships in place. In this article, we’ll walk you through four major points to consider before going factory direct.

Topics: Sourcing

You may have heard some of the "buzz words" circulating around lean manufacturing. In fact, an entire industry of consultants have come out of the woodwork to help with your factory inefficiencies - often for a hefty fee. But what if we were to introduce to you, in simple terms, a trusted method that you can implement on your own?

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice

Let's imagine that you import electric blenders for sale in the UK market. There are a host of standard quality and safety checks that you would normally have your third-party inspection company perform on your behalf. So the question becomes... can your third-party inspection partner help you with product certification?

Topics: Quality Q&A

When you have a new product design, do you ever wonder how a factory makes the initial sample? What about how factory management teaches unskilled assembly workers to mass produce thousands of units of your product...

Topics: Quality Q&A

If you've ever drank baijiu or other Chinese alcohol in a social or business setting with Chinese people, you've probably heard the word "ganbei" as some point. Depending on how many drinks you've already had and where you were in China, you may have heard this brief phrase belted out...

Topics: Cultural Notes from the East

What is a social compliance audit and what does it mean for manufacturers? This is a question that's risen to prominence in the past several years and resonated throughout global trading and manufacturing. When it comes to making sure that your suppliers are compliant with local laws and the requirements of retailers you supply, social compliance audits are just about the only tool at your disposal... .

Topics: Social Compliance, social compliance audit

Hate to see chips, peeling and other damage to the enamel coating of your cast iron cookware? Coating adhesion testing verifies bonding strength of the coating and is an important on-site for cast iron cookware. This type of special inspection testing looks for any weaknesses in the enamel... ?

Topics: Special Inspection Tests

Do your suppliers routinely misinterpret your emails and verbal instructions? If so, you are definitely not alone. Just about every factory in China has staff that can communicate with clients in English. Yet innocent typos, outright fraud, and just plain cultural differences crop up all the time, often in subtle ways.

Topics: Manufacturing Tips & Advice