QualityInspection.org

Quality Assurance, Product Development, and Purchasing Strategies in China

Cradle To Cradle Design And Manufacturing [Podcast]

In this episode… As climate change becomes more obvious, resources and energy are more expensive, and consumers demand more sustainable products, many manufacturers want to find a way to design more environmentally-friendly products. With this in mind, Renaud and Adrian discuss Cradle To Cradle design and manufacturing. Instead of becoming waste, C2C products are designed to be reused as materials for new products or harmlessly biodegrade. Manufacturers are also encouraged to reduce their … [Read more...]

What Does An Industrial Designer Do? [Podcast]

In this episode… British product designer Andy Bartlett guests on the podcast to explore industrial design in detail. An industrial designer is one of the important players in realizing your product concept and developing it so it is helpful to understand how they work. To that end, Andy will answer the following questions: What is industrial design? What are the best practices followed by designers? What tools might they use and when? What role does CMF (color, material, finish) play in … [Read more...]

QualityInspection.org’s Top Blog Posts & Videos Of 2021

The rollercoaster has continued in 2021! After a difficult 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic first hit, it's perhaps understandable that many of us might have hoped that things would settle down in 2021, however, since last year's roundup in the top posts and videos of 2020 it's been more of the same. Supply chains have buckled, commodity and sea freight prices have gone through the roof, covid continues to rage (what variant are we even on now!?), and importers have numerous reasons to feel … [Read more...]

3 Elements Required To Manufacture Great Products [podcast]

In this episode… Your host Renaud Anjoran is joined once again by Andrew Amirnovin, Sofeast's head of New Product Development, to discuss the 3 elements a factory (yours or your supplier's) needs in order to provide good manufacturing performance. What is 'good manufacturing performance?' It's all of the things importers want from their suppliers! Product quality that reaches our standards Costs within what we're expecting Fast delivery times and no delays Safe, compliant … [Read more...]

How the right to repair movement & laws may affect manufacturers in future [Podcast]

In this episode... Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran talks about the 'Right To Repair' movement that is gathering pace today. Consumers are calling for it and governments are starting to bring in legislation in order to steer the electronics industry in a more sustainable direction and reduce the huge amount of e-waste being created each year. But if you're manufacturing electronic products, how might it affect you? Having to design for repairability certainly adds new challenges, but … [Read more...]

Manufacture in China, Get Your Product Copied? Not That Simple.

There are many examples out there of companies that got in big trouble because of their suppliers in China. In many cases, a supplier got very tempted to start selling the same product on their customer’s market.  As a result, people who are designing and developing a new product are often reluctant to plan for manufacturing in China, even when the difference in cost will obviously be massive. … [Read more...]

Navigating The Product Design and NPI Maze For New Products [Podcast]

In this episode… You've got an idea for a unique new product! Amazing! Now you need to develop that product concept, design it, test and validate it, and much more before finally going into mass production and bringing it to market. You may think that this is a linear process, but in fact, it's more like a complex maze and you may take many twists and turns. Renaud Anjoran is joined by experienced British product designer Andy Bartlett to explore this NPI process and the best practices … [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...]

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...]