QualityInspection.org

Quality Assurance, Product Development, and Purchasing Strategies in China

What is the product return rate and how to reduce it? [Podcast]

In this episode… The Sofeast Group's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin explores what the product return rate is and provides advice you can take to reduce yours before you even start mass producing your product. If you do start to receive product returns, he also gives you a 6-step process you can follow to categorize the issues, focus on the most important, fix them, and monitor to see if the fix is working. Product returns are bad news as they may show that something is … [Read more...]

Final Prototype of your New Hardware Product: When Will You Get There?

In nearly all cases, people who are developing a new hardware product tend to overestimate the progress they have already accomplished, relative to the "finish line" (bringing a batch of finished products to market). They often think the hardest is to get to a prototype that works like and looks like, the final desired product. That's often wrong, as getting tooling and pre-production pilot runs signed off may take more time and effort. Similarly, they often think they will get to that … [Read more...]

Do THIS Before You Start Mass Production! [Podcast]

In this episode… Sofeast's head of New Product Development joins Adrian to talk about the NPI process for getting a new product to market and, in particular, the one key thing you need to do before you start mass production. This is a great reminder for anyone who's currently developing a new product and values reducing risks! Just hit the play button to start listening..! Listen to the episode right here 👇👇👇 🎧 The One ’MUST DO’ Before Mass Producing Your New Product (Feat. … [Read more...]

What Does A Good QA Program For New Electronic Products Include? [Podcast]

In this episode… Renaud and Adrian explore what a good Quality Assurance program for new electronic products looks like. Any new products have greater risks, and in many cases, importers haven't been able to visit Chinese suppliers to control them during new product development and mass production. So this introduction to what activities make up a QA program that will reduce and avoid quality, reliability, and compliance risks will be helpful for both when you work with a third party who … [Read more...]

Planning for Quality & Compliance at the Product Design Stage: 3 Topics You MUST Focus On

A reader asked what he should pay attention to when he starts to work on a new product in order to avoid a very large “dumb tax” in the future. This is a good question, as there are many activities to undertake that will help your product be compliant and have quality and reliability that reaches or exceeds your and your customers' expectations once it has been produced. I recently wrote about the typical NPI process we follow with clients and its many constituent activities in this post: … [Read more...]

The New Apparel Development & Production Process [Podcast]

In this episode… Renaud is joined by another special guest, Belinda Jacobs founder of Techpacks.co, a company that has been helping soft goods designers and brands improve production & decrease waste, through tech packs since 2016. If you're an apparel designer and have a new garment to bring to market, you're going to love this episode! Belinda and Renaud join forces to talk you through the new product development process for apparel, what tech packs are and why they play a central … [Read more...]

Going from 1 Prototype to Mass Production directly is Dangerous

"Can we go directly from 1 prototype to mass production? After all, if they can make 1 good piece, surely they can make 10,000 good pieces?" Well, not really. When it comes to 3D printed parts or a product that comes entirely out of a mold, that might work. But, when different fabrication processes are involved to create custom parts (e.g. extruding the aluminum enclosure in just the right shape) and make them look nice (e.g. powder-coating it in just the right shade of grey), it gets … [Read more...]

Is Your Prototype Ready for Production? 2 Opposite Examples

Many people work hard to get to a working prototype that looks good, then they think it's a production ready prototype and can just be passed to a manufacturer. However, as I wrote before, there are many challenges when going from prototype to mass production. In some cases, there is still an enormous amount of work left to do. Since we sign strict NDAs at my company Sofeast, we can't use our clients' products as examples. But there are plenty of books that describe good examples. Let's … [Read more...]