How To Bring In Quality Inspectors Without Upsetting Suppliers

Many buyers are fed up with quality issues that went unnoticed and ended up being shipped out, and they know something needs to change. One obvious way to contain issues is to bring in quality inspectors to check product quality … Continue reading →

What Does AQL Mean? ‘AQL‘ stands for ‘Acceptance Quality Limit‘, and is defined as the “quality level that is the worst tolerable” in ISO 2859-1. It represents the maximum number of defective units, beyond which a batch is rejected. Importers … Continue reading →

In this post, I’m going to address whether checking quality during loading, if it’s even possible to do it at that time, is a good idea. I don’t think so, and here’s why…

This article introduces the different options available to buyers when it comes to the representation of product inspection findings. Inspection level II (under “normal severity”) is appropriate for most random quality inspections. But it is sometimes necessary to increase–or reduce–the … Continue reading →

Some buyers who haven’t spent much time in Chinese factories have some common misconceptions, including inaccuracies about a QC inspector’s man-day, or stories like: “Chinese production operators are forced to work 12 hours a day, in a case of modern … Continue reading →

A quality control plan is the document that lists all the quality-related checkpoints to be passed during/after a production run. Depending on the situation, it can include process, product, or legal checkpoints. Getting this document approved is an essential step … Continue reading →

What can importers do to avoid after sales quality problems that occur after a product has been shipped and is already on sale? Keep reading to understand what to do to mitigate or avoid these ‘long term quality issues’ in … Continue reading →

Supplier self inspections, rather than sending in external quality inspectors, are becoming increasingly important for today’s buyers. In certain cases, it makes a lot of sense to stop sending employees to check if a supplier has done a good job. … Continue reading →

Understanding the cost of QC inspections in China Some importers get to talk about their project for some time, see where we would help them, and finally (almost as an afterthought) ask: “How much does a quality inspection in China … Continue reading →

I wrote many times that QC inspections before shipment are a good way of keeping quality problems where they belong: In the factory. Quality control inspections are a good tool. But pointing out their limits is important. Misinterpreting their reliability is very easy.