We recently published a guest article written by Brad Pritts, one of the most experienced quality professionals I know, on the Sofeast Blog -- that article is Can I trust Chinese steel products? It is a great case study. Unfortunately, I … [Read more...]
Should You Avoid the Words “Defects” and “Defectives”?
Someone on Linkedin wrote about the distinction between these 2 terms: Defect Defective I actually see a lot of confusion around them. What does the standard say? ISO 2859-1 includes these definitions: Defect: … [Read more...]
Quality Planning for Importers: Classify Orders by Risk Level
Every purchaser knows that some orders are riskier than others and the risk impacts many of the decisions they make. This is why quality planning and classifying orders by risk level is important for importers. … [Read more...]
3 Basic Process Improvement Tools: Flow Chart, FMEA, Control Plan
There are 3 basic process improvement tools that you can use to help you plan ahead to avoid missteps that might be quite costly: The Process flow chart The Process FMEA (Failure Mode & Effects Analysis) The control plan … [Read more...]
China: forecasting and preventing production problems
Most importers are pretty bad when it comes to assessing the probability of quality problems with a given supplier. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that they might not know the factories that work for them. The solution … [Read more...]