How To Inspect Your Chinese Factories?

When you are working with Chinese factories, you know to check your product schedule, to ask the third party to do the quality control. What about other things you need to inspect? Is it necessary to verify raw materials or risk everything? How to inspect the factories better?

When you are buying product from china, it is difficult to tell if you are working with a factory, a trading company or something in between.

It is key problem to know exactly who you are working with when it comes to product and quality issues. If you are not directly working with the factory, the supplier can not provide you satisfactory answers about the product. If you’re having an urgent time putting your finger on who you’re working with, you should contact a company specializing in China Supplier Verification.

Maybe you worried about Chinese suppliers that they do not understand English. But about 50% of what you write in emails they understand. Remember that English is not this person’s first language; keep your emails simple and your directions clear.

You may think to communicate too much with emails. With an overseas supplier, you considered that do they get the information already? Sometimes, time difference can be a pain; you can arrange a phone conference with overseas suppliers. Online telephony such as Skype, which Chinese is familiar with, make it easy and free for you to communicate with contacts in china.

It is necessary to verify raw materials and risk everything. You should exactly know what materials are being used, and request documentation from the supplier that the materials are safe. You should assume that the factory in china will use the cheapest materials. Insist that your supplier provide you with written verification. If your supplier can not verify this then contact a 3rd party QC company for guidance.

About the quality issues, the best way to arrange the inspection is with a third party QC company, it also can be arranged by your own staff in Asia, or your agent. You should insist on seeing an inspection report in English (including photos) which documents the process.

Ensure that you have the document professionally translated into Chinese, and make the QC checklist for discussing production and quality with your supplier. You may find that you don’t have a lot of the details that the QC Checklist calls for. If you find there are something lack of, you need send to your supplier to fill in.

You need distinguish yourself by being able to consistently deliver excellent quality. Your customers will no doubt appreciate your diligence, and ability to speak intelligently about your focus on quality.