I ran a guest post on the China Law Blog that sums up most of what I have learned about quality assurance in China so far. The article is called The Five Steps To Successfully Buying Product From China.

It touches on seemingly separate issues:

1. Finding a suitable supplier
2. Defining the product specs in detail
3. Negotiating the right payment terms
4. Performing product inspections and lab tests
5. Increasing one’s leverage with a contract

I used a nice online tool to turn the post into a “cloud” of the most frequently-used words in that article:

Seems like a mess? My point is that these are the elements of a successful China sourcing strategy. It has to be integrated, meaning that each element supports and reinforces the others.

Here are a few examples of interdependencies:

• If you work with a bad supplier, all the tools and help in the world will only help you put out fires.
• If your supplier suddenly subcontracts to a different factory, and if you don’t perform regular QC inspections, you might well receive containers of junk.
• If you don’t detail the product specs in writing, how can an inspector do his job objectively? And what to do when you find an issue in production that you did not specifically address in your previous communication with your supplier?
• If you pay your supplier too early and if you have no enforceable contract, how can you force them to rework / reproduce a batch of defective goods?

What do you think?