A T-Link Case History
Sourcing and Quality Control in China for a Small Southern California Appliance Manufacturer
For many years T-Link has been pleased to work with a small appliance manufacturer located in Southern California. This business has grown substantially from an entrepreneurial small business to a good-sized middle market company. Its products have been designed in the U.S. and manufactured in China.
T-Link began working with them doing pre-shipment inspections in two factories to assure that their products continued to meet the highest quality standards. One of the two factories has produced consistently high quality and has very few major and minor defects as determined by sampling in pre-shipment inspections. The other, however, consistently failed inspections and was becoming a major headache for our client.
One time, this poorer quality factory, shipped an order without pre-approval. The goods were found to be defective. At T-Link we arranged for a U.S. based logistics company to receive the inventory and hand sort to find acceptable goods to be able to fill an urgent customer order. At the same time, our team in China went to the factory to conduct thorough manufacturing and quality audit and to begin with the factory to improve its manufacturing process. Every aspect of the process from incoming inspections and material storage and handling to final packaging was assessed and recommendations were made for improvement. We also made recommendations for the improvement of their internal inspection and quality control systems.
Writing Quality Control Standards
We assisted them in writing new quality control standards for each product. And we instituted a system of
Assisting with Factory Expansion in China
As this client continued to grow, we helped them identify and vet two new factories. Once approved we worked with factory management to help them understand our client’s quality expectations and to establish internal systems and reporting to aid the quality assurance process.
A Perfect Solution for USA companies manufacturing in China
Because our services are very fairly priced, we have become the equivalent of a Chinese office for our client at far lower cost and much less hassle that if they were actually to have an office.