A reader told me about a case “whereby upon arrival in Europe it was found that the majority of consumer products were defective, however the [final random] inspection report by a foreign inspection agency in China did not show any abnormalities.”

His question was, how is this possible?

There are actually many possible reasons for this. Inspecting a shipment’s quality is not 100% foolproof. For fun, I like to quote the note on Durex condoms’ packaging:

No method of contraception can give you 100% protection against pregnancy, HIV or sexually transmitted infections.

Even with a team of excellent and dedicated inspectors, a fraction of quality issues will always slip through. I listed what I guess are the 7 most frequent explanations of such cases:

1. The importer does not understand the purpose of QC inspections. He thinks the quality control firm will somehow operate its magic and make the goods perfect. The report itself might be “failed”, but the client does not understand the implications of this result.
2. The buyer does not send clear specifications, and does not send a reference sample. Visual defects would be noticed by a good inspector, but what about non-conformity to the buyer’s requirements? If you don’t say it should be blue and if you don’t look at the photos, a red product will be passed.
3. The client does not read the whole report. In certain cases, the inspector notices something suspect and writes a special note about it. But he cannot send a “failed” report because it is not clearly “not conform to the client’s specs / to the reference sample” or is not necessarily considered a defect.
4. The factory does not wait and ships before the client can receive the report and take a decision. When the products are in the forwarder’s warehouse or on a plane/boat, the client needs very strong evidence of quality issues before he stops the whole shipping process.
5. The inspector does not do the job properly, for whatever reason. In most quality control firms, inspectors don’t get a single phone call from their supervisor during the day. Some of them end up rushing their jobs to do inspections for other clients, in other factories!
6. The QC firm sends an inspector who is not qualified for a certain category of products. For example, how can an inspector of electronics think of checking the dry-rubbing color fastness on a polyester fabric dyed in a deep color? Even garment inspectors can forget it if it’s not on their checklist…
7. The factory gives money to the inspector to avoid reporting on certain problems. It does happen, particularly in poorly structured or in very large inspection firms. The companies that look the most reputable are not always the most reliable.

My reader’s question was about final random inspections. There is another origin of “missed” quality issues: inspecting early in the production cycle, concluding that the factory is on the right track, and failing to confirm average quality before shipment.

Does anybody have other examples?