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One of our regular readers, Brad Pritts, sent me a note about yesterday's article. I thought it was a great follow up. Here it is. -- I've been working with ISO TS 16949 since its inception, and with its predecessor, QS-9000. I'd have a few comments for those unfamiliar with it. 1) Why did it come about? As mentioned, the auto industry is highly dependent on supplier quality; they've had their own approaches for SQA since the late 1970's. Besides the difficulty of change, think about the … [Read more...]

Last month, Mr. Guenther from Adidas Footwear's Manufacturing Excellence department gave a presentation on the topic of "Dealing effectively with increases in labor costs in a labor intensive industry". It was one of the best presentations of the last sourcing conference organized by the European Chamber. Adidas Footwear works with a number of suppliers that own a total of 48 factories. They have to source about 25,000 articles every year. So they have to maintain a massive buying … [Read more...]

In Limits of Statistical Process Control in China, experienced consultant Brad Pritts described his observations over the years. Below is his advice to use statistical tools to improve production processes.  ----- What I do when I work with companies, whether US or Chinese, is the following approach.  I learned most of this from books by Dr. Don Wheeler, a statistician and disciple of Deming.  I strongly recommend anything written by Wheeler to people who want to use statistics to improve … [Read more...]

I am always interested in tools that prove useful in improving a factory's operations. But I always wondered, how useful is Statistical Process Control (SPC)? The fact is, I have never seen a Chinese factory make good use of SPC tools. I asked Brad Pritts, an experienced quality consultant specializing in the auto industry, for his opinion. Some classic SPC tools are listed in the "core quality tools" of the North American car industry. So it would make sense to have lots of factories apply … [Read more...]

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with David Collins (consulting director of China Manufacturing Consultants, a company I am involved in) and we shot a few videos on topics related to factory improvement in the Chinese context. We have already uploaded some of them. They are very instructive, and about 2 minutes long. They are on Youtube and soon will also be on Youku. Quality Improvement Here are two concepts that 99.9% of Chinese factories don't apply. Hence the heavy reliance on final … [Read more...]

Designing a mold tool is all about designing it to produce the part required as efficiently as possible with maximum output and minimal tool down time. Unfortunately, few mold makers in China apply best practices, and few importers are knowledgeable enough to catch design issues. A few common errors to avoid are shown below. They can be categorized in two groups: tooling design and construction, and part design. 1. Tooling Design Points 1.1 Incorrect material selection – The coefficient of … [Read more...]

Last week I wrote about the cost of making a mold. This week I am addressing another common question from clients: why does it generally take about one month? The length of time it takes to produce a mold tool depends on a number of factors. Primarily, the more complex the part, the longer it takes to manufacture the mold. Other factors to take into account are the size of the part to be molding, and the number of cavities within the tool. The basic parts of a mold tool are: Bolster or … [Read more...]

Many clients have asked me "what determines the cost of a mold?" or "how to get plastic injection molds made for low prices in China?" So I asked one of our engineers for an explanation. The short answer is, “it all depends”. Mold tools can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars and the main factors are the complexity of the part, size and the number of cavities required in the tool. If there are undercuts or screw sections that need molding, this … [Read more...]