Elksourcing：Essential Knowledge to Quality Inspection

For importers, it’s important to have its own inspector or 3-rd party inspector to do quality inspection prior to shipment, however, the process and exact work details are daunting for most new importers.  Most product inspections follow a process with several specific steps. When an inspection goes wrong, it’s most often because steps weren’t clear, or inspectors otherwise didn’t follow them according to the buyer’s instructions.

1. Pulling random samples for inspection

Most importers know the importance of pulling random samples during QC inspection using a statistically-significant acceptance sampling method. Without pulling samples randomly, you risk getting a report that doesn’t fairly represent the quality of the entire shipment.

Factory staff can actually hinder inspection accuracy if permitted to choose which units will be checked. Some may “cherry pick” samples or direct inspectors to check units they know will meet requirements from a specific area of the warehouse.

2. Checking the product against specifications

You might provide your QC team with CAD drawings, an approved sample and other reference materials to clarify product specifications. Your QC checklist should not only direct your inspector’s attention to these, but also list any other specifications they should check during inspection.

A QC checklist typically covers product specifications such as:

A.    Item weight and dimensions

B.    Material and construction

C.   Item color

D.   Item marking and labeling, and

E.    General appearance

3. Verifying packaging requirements

Obvious problems with packaging are normally easy to spot. But some of the more specific details are easy to miss during inspection and reporting if you don’t include them in your quality manual.

Your inspector will typically reference your checklist for the exact type of packaging, markings or labeling, artwork and other requirements they must confirm at the factory.

4. Classifying and reporting quality defects

Most products are prone to a set of quality defects unique to their product type. For example, warping is a defect known to affect wooden products. And flash is a defect known to affect injection-molded products.

But without clarification in your QC checklist, your inspector is likely to misreport—or omit from their report entirely—any product defects found.

QC professionals typically classify defects as “critical”, “major” or “minor” in order of severity. And inspection checklists often have a section for defects and how to classify them, which the inspector uses to determine defect severity.

5. Conducting on-site testing

On-site product testing is an essential part of QC inspection for a wide variety of products. Inspectors conduct product tests to identify any issues that might affect your products’ safety, function or performance.

Product inspectors rely on inspection checklists to provide testing criteria and procedures, testing sample sizes and more. Inspectors might perform testing incorrectly or misreport the result if they’re following an incomplete QC checklist.

Let’s say you’re manufacturing electric blenders—a product with many parts that need to work together:

A.    The lid must fit correctly onto the container

B.    The container must fit correctly onto the blade assembly; 

C.   The blade assembly must fit correctly onto the base unit.

Conclusion

If you were at your supplier’s factory personally inspecting your order, you would want to check certain aspects of your product. And while you might not be available to inspect every order, you can still advise others on how to review your product based on your same standard.

By remaining mindful of how product inspectors use inspection checklists, you can help inspectors help you. With the aid of a QC checklist, your inspectors are more likely to be fully aware of your quality requirements.

When QC staff have a detailed checklist on hand you can sleep more soundly knowing that you’ve provided all the information necessary to conduct a thorough inspection.

Elksourcing：Why Early QC Involvement Is Important?

Successfully sourcing your products from China implies being careful and diligent about each step of the manufacturing process. QC (Quality Control) is one important step that responsible importers implement at some stages of their production, usually before shipment because it is believed to be the most cost-efficient stage for quality control.

Pre-shipment inspections are best sellers in the 3rd party QC industry; they are performed when production is finished (or almost finished). But without earlier preparation and follow-up with the factory, these inspections might present a few risks that you need to consider:

1. Costly Rework:

Identifying defects late during the production cycle involves higher costs of rework and repair. Unpacking all the finished goods, sorting the defective products, reworking or changing them and repacking them again is costly.

2. Negative impact on Time-to-Market:

If problems are found, repairing them often delays the shipment of your goods, which might affect your time to market.

3. Compromising on Quality:

Because of time or cost pressure, and also because of lack of support from the factories, many buyers end up agreeing for the goods to be shipped even when they don’t meet their initial quality expectations.

4. Damaging your relationship with the supplier:

Creating a healthy and long-term partnership with your supplier is a must to succeed in your products sourcing in China and to consistently get the level of Quality that you want.  Often, issues found during a pre-shipment inspection might lead to arguments and frustrations from both sides (the importer and the supplier).

“No one mentioned this before”, “If you want this quality it will cost more”, “This is unavoidable” are examples of what you can hear from your supplier, because clear requirements and specifications on the products were not agreed before production and proper follow up with your production was not done at early stages.