QC in China

Both buyers and suppliers are working hard to maximize profits, causing shortcuts to be taken or worse. Local QC companies are offering a much lower cost for on site visitation compared to sending over engineers from afar.

Proper QC however is more than a “look and feel” inspection. QC should balance all measures taken against product specs and warranty (long term effects). Nobody wants large volumes of returns, support calls (at $20 each) or worse: recalls.

QC can also save the client a considerable amount of money by lowering reject rates on molded parts for instance. Depending on part complexity this requires true in depth injection molding and tooling knowledge.

Larger volume production is a great exercise in statistics: from source parts to final assembly. Troubleshooting is ambiguous and can lead to multiple paths, each one possibly spawning new (undetected) issues.

This all asks for a very methodical approach, extending from the DFMEA done upfront, DOE on the source part creation and fish bone diagrams etc..

QC should be an extension of upfront engineering, by engineers in the right discipline who can communicate directly (without filters). I have seen too many occasions where other visitors claimed to have “solved the problem already”, whereas the real problems only came out in the next few days.

Let’s not take a short cut to solve a short cut….