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Pricing, Negotiation, Contracts | Vetting Chinese Suppliers (Part 10)

November 13, 2020

Pricing, Negotiation, Contracts | Vetting Chinese Suppliers (Part 10)

Getting quotations is a part of vetting new Chinese suppliers, too.  We have been creating a mini-series guiding you through effective vetting of Chinese suppliers that will help you to find the best possible manufacturer for your products this year, and, as we come to the end of it, it's time to focus on one of the final stages: negotiating price, getting quotations, and signing contracts (listen back to the entire mini-series on vetting Chinese suppliers here 👍). Let's assume you have … [Read more...]

Filed Under: China Supplier Vetting, Uncategorized Tagged With: China, commercial negotiations, negotiation, pricing, Quotes in RMB, rfq, sourcing fro china, vetting suppliers

You Need To Know About UKCA If You Sell Products In The UK

November 11, 2020

You Need To Know About UKCA If You Sell Products In The UK

Many companies have been selling their products with a CE mark in the European Union and in the UK. They are in for a big shock as the UKCA mark comes into force to supersede CE in the UK! … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Certifications, Product Compliance Tagged With: CE, certifications, product certifications, product compliance, safety certifications, UKCA

Why Product Safety, Quality, and Reliability Are Tightly Linked

November 9, 2020

Recently I read an article that calls for manufacturers to be more proactive in reducing risks for consumers. And they shared this (pretty scary) graph about product safety recalls: Many companies that develop & purchase products wonder how to minimize the risk of a forced recall, which can be extremely expensive. And my advice is simple: Put more efforts in assuring the quality and the reliability of your products, and it will greatly contribute to their safety.  Let's … [Read more...]

Filed Under: New Product Development Tagged With: consumer risk, product compliance, product quality, product reliability, product safety

Exploring Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) [Podcast]

November 4, 2020

good manufacturing practices

Time to pay attention to good manufacturing practices! Importers with suppliers over in Asia may benefit from adopting GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices). What are they? How are they useful for managing and improving the performance of suppliers in countries like China? How do they fit in with quality audits, social compliance audits, and process audits? The basics are always a good starting point for any supplier management and development plan and GMPs represent the basic activities … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Supplier Management Tagged With: factory audits, gmp, good manufacturing practices, podcast, supplier audits, supplier management

Challenges for Moving Manufacturing out of China in 2020

November 3, 2020

Challenges for Moving Manufacturing out of China in 2020

The US Congress and the White House have been pushing hard for "decoupling" from China. And a part of that objective is moving manufacturing out of China -- and ideally to reshore to the USA. It may be too early to draw a conclusion on the effect of their decisions (the tariffs but, more generally, the perceived risk of stronger and stronger measures). But here is a short summary of what I have seen, heard, and read. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sourcing New Suppliers Tagged With: finding suppliers in se asia, moving production from China, relocating, relocating manufacturing, relocating production, reshore manufacturing, reshoring

How To Perform In-Depth Due Diligence On Your Supplier [Podcast]

October 28, 2020

How To Perform In-Depth Due Diligence On Your Supplier

Do your new or current suppliers pose a risk to your business? Sometimes the only way to find out if a supplier poses a risk is to perform some deep due diligence on them in order to assess their business health and if they're able to be a stable, reliable supplier for the long-term. Especially in these times where we're dealing with a pandemic, getting a realistic picture of how suppliers are doing is hard without the ability to be on the ground in China. But there are actions you can … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Risk Management Tagged With: common problems with Chinese suppliers, due diligence, minimizing risks, podcast, supplier relationships, supply chain risk, vetting suppliers

Investigating the Causes of Product Failure and Improving Design

October 26, 2020

Investigating the Causes of Product Failure and Improving Design

You conduct reliability tests on your new products. You and your suppliers do product inspections and laboratory tests on mass production orders. Your customers probably give you feedback on the issues they find on what you ship to them. You collect many data this way. You set aside samples that don't pass. But do you learn from this? One of the most important activities is the investigation of the causes of product failure when certain samples fail the inspections/tests or fail in the hands of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Product Compliance Tagged With: improving product design, product defects, product failure, product failure causes, product reliability testing, product testing, quality engineers, reliability testing, testing lab

The Basics of Quality Management for Buyers [Podcast]

October 21, 2020

The Basics of Quality Management for Buyers Podcast

What's the best way to get started with quality management? It makes a lot of sense to work to improve your product quality coming from Chinese suppliers and you don't need to be a large corporation to do this, but this kind of quality management is best when it follows a process. So in this episode of the podcast, we discuss what the quality management process is, and its 3 main parts: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. By understanding how to put measures in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: juran trilogy, podcast, quality control, quality improvement, quality inspections, quality management, quality management best practices, quality management system, quality planning

Should You Avoid the Words “Defects” and “Defectives”?

October 20, 2020

Should You Avoid the Words "Defects" and "Defectives"?

Someone on Linkedin wrote about the distinction between these 2 terms: Defect Defective I actually see a lot of confusion around them.   What does the standard say? ISO 2859-1 includes these definitions: Defect: non-fulfilment of an intended usage requirement Nonconformity: non-fulfilment of a specified requirement (Note: In some situations specified requirements coincide with customer usage requirements) Nonconforming item: item with one or more … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: defect list, Defect sorting, defectives, defects, design defects, manufacturing defects, quality issues, reducing defects, solving quality issues

An Introduction to Root Cause Analysis (Not Just for Manufacturing)

October 16, 2020

An Introduction to Root Cause Analysis (Not Just for Manufacturing)

One of the most frustrating aspects of working with Chinese suppliers is that, for the most part, they don't want to (or cannot) conduct a root cause analysis. Let's say you found a serious issue in one of your productions and you don't want it to come back in the future. You ask for an investigation into that problem. And they come back with very superficial responses that are clearly still far from exposing root causes. Here are very common excuses: "It is due to an issue on the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Process Improvement Tagged With: 8D, fixing problems, process improvement, root cause analysis

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Weekly updates for professional importers on better understanding, controlling, and improving manufacturing & supply chain in China.

This is the official blog of Sofeast.com.

This blog is written by Renaud Anjoran, an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer who has been involved in Chinese manufacturing since 2005.

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Latest Articles

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  • Why Do Importers Need Product Reliability Testing? [Podcast]
  • New Physical Products: Patents Should Come After Market Success
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  • How To Validate Your Supplier’s Factory’s Production Capacity (From Abroad) [Podcast]

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