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: non-fulfilment of an intended usage requirement Nonconformity: non-fulfilment of a specified requirement (Note: In some situations specified requirements coincide with customer usage requirements) Nonconforming item: item with one or more … [Read more...]
Solving a Quality Problem Seldom Necessitates High-Tech Engineering
In many companies, and in particular in many Chinese companies, the response to problems is often "let's invest in technology". Unfortunately, spending a lot of resources on engineering is seldom the best solution. I just read a great story that illustrates this. A toothpaste manufacturer had a regular quality issue that was generating bad publicity: some boxes didn't contain a tube of toothpaste. It was due to the way the production lines were set up. They spent 8 million dollars on a … [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 is not always simple, especially when a trading company is blocking information about the manufacturing facility/facilities it uses. So it is important to avoid this situation from the beginning, by requesting to approve the factory. The second reason is … [Read more...]