China is the world's factory, with tens of millions of
people employed in making almost every conceivable product and tens of
thousands of manufacturers in the Pearl River Delta region alone.
That's true but there's another revolution waiting to happen
in China, and it has nothing to do with politics. Much of the Chinese dragon's
success can be drawn as a parallel to the rise of Japan's manufacturing heyday.
China has already achieved the status that Japan achieved 30
years ago, for low cost low importance goods wherever you go in the West you
can find Chinese made toys, clothes, electronics, and more. But Western
consumers still treat these products with a certain amount of disdain because
they are considered to be "cheap and cheerful".
Western companies can be blamed for this too, in the rush to
secure massively increased margins many contracts have been signed only on a
"price per article" basis. A good prototype is produced, and the
assumption is that all future items will be of the same grade.
This needs to change. If you consider the Japanese rise to
global dominance the key factor in their success was the implementation of
strict quality controls and brand new theories of management, both Kaizen and
Total Quality Management owe their existence to the endless drive to increase
the sale ability and worth of Japanese products.
Otherwise you'll end up being one of the many companies
who've been on the embarrassing end of product recalls (this includes many
multi-nationals who are not exempt from making mistakes; Hasbro for example
have had to recall lead contaminated children's toys in both Europe and the
United States).
When setting up your outsourcing relationship it's worth
examining in detail what kind of quality control (if any) your supplier has in
place. It's common for factories to declare in depth QC processes and dedicated
staff when closer examination reveals that there are no documented processes,
no such staff and worse no records kept of any procedures that are actually
conducted.
If this is the case it doesn't mean you should refuse to
work with that business, but it does mean you will need to spend some time
educating them on the value of higher quality production and working with them
to achieve that, and auditing their compliance over a period of time.
There will be a revolution in quality in China, the
government is now trying to encourage a more internally focused economy and
while the prevailing focus of the Chinese consumer may still be cost focused
(thanks to appreciably lower earnings than their Western counterparts), there
are growing signs that when Chinese consumers purchase goods they are choosing
foreign made over domestically produced goods in no small part because they
consider them to be better made.
For more information about China Inspection ,China Quality Inspection,Product Testing China and Laboratory Testing China please visit my website.
