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Quality Checklists: 3 Examples for Inspections

October 12, 2022 by Renaud Anjoran

inspection checklists

  Over the years, we have provided feedback to many clients on their product specification sheets and their quality checklists for inspections. Rather than a step-by-step guideline, the most useful is usually to provide them with a few real examples for different types of products.   3 examples of quality inspection checklists In 2020, when personal protective equipment was severely lacking in many countries, we released some of our templates on our commercial … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: inspection checklists, managing quality, product inspections, product quality, qc inspections, quality inspections

Mechanical Parts Inspections: Checkpoints & Defects

July 26, 2022 by Renaud Anjoran

Mechanical Parts Inspections: Checkpoints & Defects

When inspecting general consumer goods (except food), most companies classify defects and checkpoints in these 4 categories: Aesthetics & smell Conformance to specs (including measurements) Function, usability, reliability Safety & regulatory But how about precision mechanical parts inspections, made from metal, plastic, resin, or other polymers? … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: defects, mechanical parts, process controls, quality inspections

Quality and Compliance of Imported Products

March 7, 2022 by Renaud Anjoran

Quality and Compliance of Imported Products

To run a successful business, you want to make and distribute products that are at the right quality standard and that comply with the regulations of the countries of sale. I guess nobody will argue with that. But what do "Quality and Compliance" mean, in practice? They are often separated under different functions inside the same company. Why? Let's look at these 2 concepts in the context of manufacturing products and importing them. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Product Compliance Tagged With: product compliance, product quality, quality inspections, quality management

How The AQL Inspection Levels In ISO 2859-1 Affect Sampling Size

June 16, 2021 by Renaud Anjoran

How The AQL Inspection Levels In ISO 2859-1 Affect Sampling Size

This article introduces the different AQL inspection levels available to buyers. Those levels are mentioned in the ISO 2859-1 standard (or its American equivalent, ANSI/ASQC Z1.4). Let’s explore the different levels of random inspections, and how they affect the size of the samples your inspector will pull out of each batch during an inspection. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: ANSI/ASQ Z1.4, ISO 2859-1, quality inspections, Sampling, special inspection levels

Factory Management: the 4 Main Roles in the Quality Department

January 4, 2021 by Renaud Anjoran

Factory Management the 4 Main Roles in the Quality Department

China, as a whole, has 35+ years of experience manufacturing products for export customers. They have accumulated a lot of experience. However, foreign buyers are rather consistently shocked at the level of mismanagement that plagues their factories' quality operations. And fixing it is not that hard. In this article, I will lay out what I see as the 4 basic roles that manufacturers need to fill in their quality department. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: In The Factory Tagged With: Chinese factory management, factory management, hiring a quality inspector, hiring in China, hiring quality managers, QC, quality department, quality inspections, quality management, quality staff

The Basics of Quality Management for Buyers [Podcast]

October 21, 2020 by Adrian Leighton

The Basics of Quality Management for Buyers Podcast

What's the best way to get started with quality management? It makes a lot of sense to work to improve your product quality coming from Chinese suppliers and you don't need to be a large corporation to do this, but this kind of quality management is best when it follows a process. So in this episode of the podcast, we discuss what the quality management process is, and its 3 main parts: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. By understanding how to put measures in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: juran trilogy, podcast, quality control, quality improvement, quality inspections, quality management, quality management best practices, quality management system, quality planning

How to set up a Receiving Inspection: Checklist, Procedure, Reporting form

October 22, 2019 by Renaud Anjoran

How to set up a Receiving Inspection: Checklist, Procedure, Reporting form

I have written extensively about pre-shipment inspections (before, during, or after production), always from the perspective of the buyer checking what a supplier is doing; but I noticed that I haven't covered the receiving inspection (also called incoming quality inspections). However, that's a really important topic, so let's get into how to set one up here... … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: product inspections, qa, QC, quality inspections, receiving inspection

Why a First Article Inspection Can Save an Entire Production from Quality Issues

October 3, 2019 by Renaud Anjoran

Why a First Article Inspection Can Save an Entire Production from Quality Issues

Planning the start of production so that a first article inspection can be performed before the rest of mass production takes place... That's not something the average Chinese factory does, unfortunately. However, under the right circumstances, a first article inspection (FAI) can save an entire production from disaster. Here's how... … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: first article inspection, first article validation, pilot runs, product inspection, production run, quality inspection, quality inspections

Dimensional Control: Should Inspectors Write their Findings?

September 9, 2019 by Renaud Anjoran

Dimensional Control: Should Inspectors Write their Findings?

A few years back, I wrote an article related to dimensional control about the limitations of asking inspectors to write the exact values they find when checking measurements of items like garments and precision mechanical pieces. First, the numbers you can read in a report are not necessarily the reality, and I cited many ways this happens: Use of measurement instruments that are not calibrated (poor accuracy) or that lack precision Inadvertent human errors (misreading the instrument, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: checking dimensions, checking fixture, checking measurements, dimensional control, garments, inspectors, mechanical pieces, quality inspections

What Is the Confidence Level when Working with AQL Tables?

August 1, 2019 by Renaud Anjoran

What Is the Confidence Level when Working with AQL Tables?

A reader wrote to me and asked the following question about sampling plans by attributes: What is the "Confidence Level" when using the AQL Tables? How can we determine what the confidence levels are, and are there formulas we can use? That's a valid question. When playing with statistics, one often mentions a confidence interval. For example, "90% of the time, the value will be between 34.5 and 66.0". In theory, I guess one could do the same with the values in the AQL tables. There is a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Quality Control Tips Tagged With: AQL, Aql Tables, confidence level, confidence levels, quality inspections, quality inspectors, random aql inspection, random sampling aql inspection

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Weekly updates for professional importers on better understanding, controlling, and improving manufacturing & supply chain in China.

This is the official blog of Sofeast.com.

This blog is written by Renaud Anjoran, an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer who has been involved in chinese manufacturing since 2005.

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