I came up on a really insightful article entitled Stop Fighting Fires. It was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2000 and is still very relevant. The authors identified the following 6 symptoms that are common to all … [Read more...]
Archives for May 2017
China Supplier Vetting Part 9: In-Depth Due Diligence
If you are about to select one Chinese supplier, and you know you will be tied to them for the foreseeable future, it is in your interest to spend some time and money to vet them. Here are a couple of examples: A company is about to … [Read more...]
The Root Cause Analysis — an Art Seldom Practiced in China…
One of the most common ways to drill down from a problem to the root cause(s) of that problem is the "5 whys" approach. I wrote before that Chinese manufacturing engineers & managers are, on average, very bad at uncovering root … [Read more...]
How to Conduct Stricter QC Inspections, Apart from a Lower AQL?
Buyers often ask us, how to do quality inspections in “stricter” way with some of their suppliers in China or Vietnam. 1) An easy way is to set reduce AQL limits, but the supplier might refuse. I know of a large company that sets … [Read more...]
So You Inspect Quality but Chinese Suppliers Don’t Improve?
I see a very common frustration among importers who work with Chinese suppliers. They pay for a quality inspection, some issues are found, some re-work is done... And the same issues are found on the following batch. The question is, why … [Read more...]
3 Basic Guidelines for Garment Quality Assurance in China
I have been following HC Accessories's blog for a few months, and they just published a good article (Essential Garment Quality Control Procedures for Importers and Brands). It lays out nicely the basic guidelines an importer of garments … [Read more...]
The Best of Process Improvement Tools: The Flow Chart
Do you want to make changes in your, or your supplier's, factory? The question is, where to start? There are countless process improvement tools. Some lean purists say, draw a value stream map and strategize about what needs to be done … [Read more...]