Chris Devonshire Ellis and his associates at Asia Briefing just published the Asia Sourcing Guide 2015, as described below: In this issue of Asia Briefing, we explain how and why the Asian sourcing market is changing, compare wage … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2015
What to Do after Defective Products are Delivered from China?
What to do if you didn't inspect production and you receive a shipment of unsellable products? First, check if 100% of the goods are unsellable. If not, it might be worth the cost to sort the bad pieces out. Second, check if some of … [Read more...]
Chinese Suppliers’ Poor Understanding of Statistics
In China, in many product lines, a factory that makes 95% good products is considered a good factory. And its managers will not feel ashamed. Now, let's look at it another way. A factory that ships 5 million pieces a month, at a 95% … [Read more...]
A Great Guide to Electrical Safety Tests
We just found a very nice guide published by Slaughter, a manufacturer of testing equipment. This Guide to Electrical Safety Testing is free to access on the internet. Here is what it explains: What is class I and what is class … [Read more...]
Garment and Shoe Production in Asia [Country Comparison]
A few weeks ago, I discussed garment and shoe production in Asia with an executive who has great experience in the footwear and garment industries. They shared some insights about different Asian and African countries, as far as production … [Read more...]
How to Measure the Flexibility of the Plastic You Buy in China?
A client asked how the flexibility of plastics could be tested. One of our engineers responded, and I thought it might be interesting to reproduce it here. Better quality plastics are usually more flexible. There is NO standard value … [Read more...]
Challenges in Managing Quality Inspectors in China
I stopped counting how many people complained about their company's inspectors. It seems at least half the companies that employ their own inspectors in China are unhappy about the behavior and/or their working methods of some of their QC … [Read more...]
Strategies to Keep Costs Low when Buying in China [podcast]
My friend Mike Michelini recently invited me to talk on the Global From Asia podcast and to discuss the topic of 5 Biggest Challenges in Importing from China and How to Manage Them. We spent about half the time talking about ways to avoid … [Read more...]