Talk about incentives. Today most North American OEM s and Distributors are turning to Asia to source their products in order to take advantage of the regions highly competitive prices which flow from their low costs of labor and raw materials combined with favorable currency exchange rates.
But while these conditions make importation of goods from Asia a great strategy for cost savings in product procurement, importing from Asia involves a great many issues related to product quality regardless of the your type of product or industry.
These issues lead to client frustration; canceled or discontinued orders; and increased costs associated with product returns, reworks, or replacements.
We have found problematic issues in quality will typically occur due to:
- Miscommunication that results in design specification errors
- Usage of the wrong raw materials or applied surface finish
- Poor craftsmanship related to hurried production to meet product demand and promised time of product delivery
- Selection of low quality suppliers or use of trading companies
- Lack of proper protocols by suppliers for product inspections and report filings
- Lack of pre-shipping product inspection by third-party inspectors
- Loss of consistency in production quality after the first order, or first few orders, due to easing of product inspections
- Poor packaging plans or use of materials which result in product damage during transit
- Lack of production supervision to ensure production is completed on-time and loaded for air or sea delivery by the date promised
None of the issues stated above are acceptable reasons for poor quality products or delays in delivery, yet all of them occur mainly for one reason, a lack of professional quality control staff that utilizes a proven, established program of quality control protocols.
Even the Asian suppliers with the highest quality and best consistency need their operations audited and their manufacturing supervised throughout the production process to ensure precise quality and production schedules in accordance with client specifications.
OSANTS features a QC staff of field engineers who visit your supplier facilities in Asia during sample production, and before, during and after full production runs. In addition, our sourcing operations executives travel to the region on a regular basis in order to audit those facilities where our client products are produced.