Total Cost of buying from China

When buying from China you always have to consider the Total Cost, which includes:

-FOB price
-the cost of returns (material/immaterial)
-the cost of delayed delivery (material/immaterial)
-the cost of management (flights/hotels, jetlag, agony)

Paying for good quality inspection is an insurance premium that no experienced China buyer goes without.

China Quality Assurance Services

Inspection Criteria definition
Quality is often defined as “conformance to specification” so in order for us to measure it we first have to sit down with our client and agree on what key measurements define a quality product. In addition to that we realize that not all quality concerns can be reduced to a number, especially for aesthetic quality of products, and that’s where our Western staff with background in Industrial Design comes in very useful.

Supplier selection

Our management team has been working in Greater China for a many years, and collectively we know of a good number of suppliers that are good to work with, and which ones to avoid. The Guanxi concept plays an important role, when we work with a factory we have known for a long time, or to whom we have been introduce helps a lot, because then there is much more at stake than just the current business deal. In case of problem (yes, they do occur sometimes..) am unknown” factory will just abandon a tooling halfway when they think fixing the problems will cost more then the final payment is worth. A “Guanxi“ factory will take the hit and keep going until the client is atisfied, so he avoids losing face.


Factory Inspection/Supplier Quality Audit

While Guanxi go a long way, the mere fact that we’re good buddies with a factory owner is of course in itself not enough, and we provide solid audit reports of the factory we’re selecting for you.

Incoming inspection

A factory Quality processes can be top notch, but Garbage In is still Garbage Out. That’s why we place quite a lot of emphasis on incoming inspection. Even more important is to verify that the incoming parts can only come from the approved source, a great majority of quality problems are caused by China manufacturers trying to save a penny by substituting inferior materials.



Pre-Production Inspection

The Pre-Production samples, which in case of electronics we define as final working sample PCBA in tooled housing, is of course an important milestone. No manufacturer is happy with 50,000 rejected units, so they often will try to sneak reworked units back in the shipments. Our goal is of course to identify potential problems early so we can eliminate the causes.

Production Inspection: 100%

Quality Inspection in most mass production factories in the US and Europe means Statistical Process Control. Don’t be surprised when a China manufacturer says he doesn’t know SPC, they typically go with 100% inspection. For a manufacturer of disk-drives armatures in Dong Guan this means that 500,000 armatures are inspected per day, by a hall full with girls with microscopes. JitVerify makes sure that the inspectors are measuring the right attributes in the right way, and perform random sample tests of the final packaged product.