QualityInspection.org

Quality Assurance, Product Development, and Purchasing Strategies in China

New Product Launch: Taking Shortcuts vs. Preventing Risks

You are developing a new product. There is currently nothing like your product on the market. You have high confidence that it will be successful (otherwise, why are you working on this project?). You need to make a choice. Do you want to do things fast? That's tempting, because who knows what the market will look like in 12 months. Or do you want to do things right? That means investing money and time in re-risking your project. Let's look at what these 2 approaches mean, in … [Read more...]

Deliverables Buyers Should Get When Developing A New Product [Podcast]

In this episode... When you develop a new product what deliverables should you be getting during the new product development process in order to assure that your product will make it mass production with the minimum of risks and at the required quality and safety standards? Renaud Anjoran explains the various deliverables, such as your BOM, control plan, validation testing, and more, that you can expect to gain that represent milestones during the NPD process.   Just hit the play … [Read more...]

Why New Product Development of Electronics Takes So Long

Over the years, we have been talking to people who are planning to or are in the process of, developing a new product. And there is a very serious mismatch between expectations and reality during the new product development process. So serious that people who are just starting on that path often cannot accept a realistic plan. Unrealistic expectations In their minds, there are only a few steps and a few success milestones. It looks a bit like this:   Harsh reality However, … [Read more...]

Tips For Buyers On A Budget Who Want To Start Manufacturing In China [Podcast]

In this episode... You'll love this episode as it contains loads of helpful tips for buyers from China who're operating on a smaller budget from Sofeast's CEO Renaud and this week's guest, sourcing expert, Rico Ngoma from Source Find Asia. They talk you through what you really need to do and some ways to lower costs where possible, so, hopefully, you can start budgeting for what's essential and handle some things yourself. For instance, it's possible to do some due diligence on potential … [Read more...]

How Bad Product Design Leads to Many Quality Issues

I had an interesting discussion a few days ago. It made me realize most people see products of obviously poor quality and think the issues come from manufacturing, while, in fact, they most often come from bad product design! Let's see why here... … [Read more...]

How good DFM and DFA Help with Production Cost & Quality

I have been reading 'the' reference textbook on the concepts of DFM and DFA (design for manufacturing and design for assembly). It's great for design engineers (especially on the mechanical side), for NPI program managers, and for anybody working on reliability, quality, or costing at the product design stage. People involved in manufacturing would also benefit from skimming through it. I picked 2 graphs that are quite interesting. … [Read more...]

Exploring Product Development Agreements For Importers [Podcast]

In This Episode... We explore product development agreements that clarify your expectations, protect your IP, keep leverage over your supplier, provide you with transparency and control over your supply chain, and make it 100% clear who is responsible for what when working with a supplier on developing a new product that is going to be manufactured in China or other Asian countries.   Just hit the play button to start listening..! Listen to the episode right here 👇👇👇 🎧 Deep … [Read more...]

Exploring The Benefits Of Rapid Prototyping And Rapid Tooling [Podcast]

In This Episode... Renaud and Adrian talk about rapid prototyping and rapid tooling methods to make prototypes a lot faster than production tooling, with a focus on electromechanical products and plastic injection molding. You'll get answers to the following questions: What are rapid prototyping and rapid tooling? What do we discover from different rounds of prototyping? What are the features of hard tooling? What are the pros and cons of the different technologies used for rapid … [Read more...]

Getting To Grips With Non-Recurring Engineering Costs (NRE) [Podcast]

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss Non-Recurring Engineering costs for manufacturers. As the name suggests, these costs are usually one-off and are what it takes to get your product into production. These costs are perhaps better known as R&D costs, and it's important to get to grips with them as they have a great impact on your product's sale price, as well as the feasibility of manufacturing it in the first place. It's fair to say that the NRE costs often turn out to be more … [Read more...]

The Design for X Approach: 12 Common Examples

The Design For X (or “Design for Excellence”) methodology lays out a number of design guidelines for reaching the product’s objectives. The idea is to review and improve the product & process design before the new product is manufactured. Many product designers design for functionality and for aesthetics. Of course, those are important, but there are other important questions such as “can it be made with mature processes?” and “can it be made within budget?” (a.k.a. Design for … [Read more...]