quality audit service

Sunchine Inspection, a professional one-stop international inspection provider, focus on providing more flexible and humanized inspection serviceto clients from all over the world.

Sunchine Inspection, Thinking for you and doing for you!

China Office

Room 2203, 22/F, Building 03, Zhongtai

International Plaza, 311, Middle Jiangdong

Road, 210019 - Nanjing - R.P.China

Tel: 0086-25-6809 3658

Fax: 0086-25- 8609 3678

E-mail: francois.shi@sunchineconsulting.com

Contact: Mr. Francois SHI

Managing Director in China Office

Mob: 0086-18951633559

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BY RENAUD ANJORAN

When a factory gets sold, the new owner generally brings a new general manager (GM) in.

And what does the GM do? He evaluates the top managers and seeks to replace the under-performers. This is expected in a typical factory turnaround.

He typically finds the replacements among his former team — at his former employer. It allows for quick hires of proven managers and engineers.

However, as Kim Pen from Chinese Manufacturing Consultants tells me, it can backfire violently.

Why?

First, the new GM, and the people he brings in, can get in conflict with the old team. That’s a disaster. And it often happens in China, where the staff is often tied to their managers more than they are to the company.

That risk is even stronger in a small factory of 200 or 300 workers because relationships are more personal than in large structures.

Second, bringing in a new manager kills the harmony that was established among the managers. The whole team gets less stable, and needs to find a new way of working together.

What the GM should do

A new general manager who needs to turn a factory around should follow these steps:

• Try to maintain the harmony in the current managerial team. Do not make big changes immediately.
• Focus on coaching the current managers in the right way, and on instilling a sense of discipline. Some managers that have mediocre performance right now might thrive under better management!
• Avoid rivalries or conflicts between departments. For example, make the factory’s performance (actual vs. target, day by day) obvious to all employees, and set up a common bonus plan. If properly introduced, it pushes all departments to work hand in hand.
• In 3 or 4 months, the current managers will better understand what is expected of them. It will be easy to see which ones can adapt, and which ones should be fired (and there will be no surprise when a firing takes place).

How to drive improvement projects

The tendency is often to hire some support staff — maybe a project manager — to drive continuous improvement.

But using the current managers and supervisors can be much more effective:

• The GM should set priorities for each of them: they should have a few improvement projects under way, in addition to dealing with their day-to-day jobs.
• Every day, the GM can walk around, observe problems, and explain his view to the supervisors & managers of that area.
• Every week, he can have a short review of the progress of the projects. A lot of pressure might be necessary!
• As effective action plans get implemented, managers and supervisors will have less fires to put out… and more time to devote to improvement projects!

Now, what if the GM doesn’t have the capability or the time to drive these projects? Good manufacturing consultants can help. It would generally take this form:

• A senior consultant helps set the priorities;
• More junior consultants come in — maybe once a week — to make status updates and to provide engineering support.

Again, the consultants don’t replace the managers and supervisors. They set priorities for them, they give “homework to do”, and they come back to check what was done.

Unfortunately, a project manager seldom has the experience to set good priorities, and even more seldom has the authority to push managers hard when they are not delivering.

—

If some readers have related experiences, it would be great to read about them!

Article Source: qualityinspection

quality certificate services

Sunchine Inspection, a professional one-stop international inspection provider, focus on providing more flexible and humanized inspection serviceto clients from all over the world.

Sunchine Inspection, Thinking for you and doing for you!

China Office

Room 2203, 22/F, Building 03, Zhongtai

International Plaza, 311, Middle Jiangdong

Road, 210019 - Nanjing - R.P.China

Tel: 0086-25-6809 3658

Fax: 0086-25- 8609 3678

E-mail: francois.shi@sunchineconsulting.com

Contact: Mr. Francois SHI

Managing Director in China Office

Mob: 0086-18951633559

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BY RENAUD ANJORAN

A few months ago, I wrote a list of testing labs that has proven helpful to many importers.

Today I want to give a bit of perspective on the different categories of laboratories. Let’s start with the ones you have probably heard of.

1. The big third-party laboratories

Who hasn’t heard of Bureau Veritas, SGS, Intertek, or TUV Rheinland?

Their consumer testing divisions tend to focus on big retailers and on the importers that sell to these retail chains.

They are the best option in these cases:

• New regulations just came out, and you need to talk to an expert and put a program in place.
• You need to certify products that might cause safety hazards. If someone dies because of your product, you want to be able to show a very famous lab’s logo on a report.

They tend to be focused on their big accounts, and not to be well organized to deal with small clients. Often it is hard to find a human being to talk to, let alone get responses to specific questions!

2. Midsize international labs

Midsize testing labs are often better suited to the needs of SMEs.

They usually have the latest equipment, and most of their technical staff comes from the bigger labs. But their product range is more limited.

Here is what Stefan Droste, from Hohenstein Laboratories, wrote to me:

I like to say, that in a small lab I know ALL the time where which sample is and therefore I am able to push a sample, remember if there was something unusual and so on. If you are a small account in one of the big ones your success rate to achieve that will be zero. All in all, the customer service is more direct if you contact a small company, compared to the big labs. In addition I like the high identification of the staff to the lab, they will simply go the extra mile for you, even if you are a small customer. They will call you if something is odd on the sample plan and so on. This extra level of service will be not as cheap (economy of scale…) though.

3. Local laboratories

In China there are many fully accredited Chinese-owned (sometimes government-owned) laboratories.

Their main advantage is their very low price, even though they might have all the latest equipment.

The downside is their low service level (in terms of providing advice), and sometimes their lack of reliability. I heard several horror stories where the lab would not really do the test, or might not respect the required preparation before the test.

4. Informal labs in client offices

Many importers, when they have a quality office and have reached a certain size, start to buy simple equipment and do the most frequent tests by themselves.

For example: an importer of textile products would purchase a washing machine and a drier, the device to cut & weigh fabrics, and so on.

The turnaround time is much shorter, since they often don’t respect the time for preparing samples as per the relevant standard. And costs are typically lower.

Hopefully, someone in their organization is more or less aware of their lack of accuracy. That’s fine if all they want is avoiding big problems. When a result is in the “grey area”, they should send samples to a third-party lab to get a more precise evaluation.

5. Internal labs of big factories

Most large manufacturers have their own internal laboratory — I have been impressed by the professionalism of a few that I have visited. Many midsize factories also have a lab.

In the best case,you (or an inspector you appoint) go to the factory and get access to such an internal lab, with assistance from one of their technicians. You get to run most of the applicable tests for free, if you have enough time!

Pay attention to the calibration of the testing equipment, though. It would be easy for a supplier to make its products perform better than they should in such a setting…

—

What do you think? Any experiences to share?

Article Source: qualityinspection

quality certification

Sunchine Inspection, a professional one-stop international inspection provider, focus on providing more flexible and humanized inspection serviceto clients from all over the world.

Sunchine Inspection, Thinking for you and doing for you!

China Office

Room 2203, 22/F, Building 03, Zhongtai

International Plaza, 311, Middle Jiangdong

Road, 210019 - Nanjing - R.P.China

Tel: 0086-25-6809 3658

Fax: 0086-25- 8609 3678

E-mail: francois.shi@sunchineconsulting.com

Contact: Mr. Francois SHI

Managing Director in China Office

Mob: 0086-18951633559

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BY RENAUD ANJORAN

Sometimes I visit a buying office with a dozen people, and most of them have “manager” somewhere in their title.

The heads of functions (purchasing, QC, accounting…) are “managers”, even though their teams are quite small. Then there are “project managers”, and a “general manager”.

The truth is, one manager is enough in that case.

The importance of the title in China and in Hong Kong

When I started working in Hong Kong, I noticed that any salesperson was an “executive”, and that many people had “general manager” somewhere near the end of their title.

My assistant at the time told me “this is Hong Kong… titles don’t mean anything”.

Actually they do mean quite a lot to those employees. A grand title looks nice on a resume, so it helps attract lots of candidates for a job opening. (Similarly, it means you are attracting those already thinking of their next job — not necessarily the right crowd).

Pompous titles also give face. And that’s another danger right here… These so-called managers think their job is simply to do emails, attend meetings, and tell their staff what to do. A manager doesn’t do any work by himself, or so they think.

What is a good manager supposed to do?

A good manager achieves more with fewer resources. Doing email, running meetings, and having tea with the boss is not, in itself, real work.

A good manager focuses on these tasks:

• Standardize the work, to free up some of his employees’ time;
• Stabilize internal processes;
• Make management more visual, for better communication and coordination;
• Train the staff, coach the staff, lead by example, maintain discipline;
• Spend time where work is performed (not always in an air-conditioned office), observe processes, notice problems;
• Get to the root cause of problems, and solve them once and for all.

(If you need more details on how to implement these objectives, get yourself a copy of Lean Office and Service Simplified.)

And let’s not forget, a real manager is ready to take a lot of pressure from his boss when something goes wrong. It is part of the job.

How to reward good employees?

Unfortunately, good individual contributors don’t necessarily make for good managers. A good purchaser might not be a good purchasing manager. The job content is not the same (I described the manager’s job content above).

So, how to recognize the achievements of a good individual contributor? Offer her a career path where she remains an individual contributor, but makes more money and gets more respect.

For example, Google has “distinguished engineers”, “Google fellows”, and so on. These titles mean a lot inside the company.

Rand Fishkin proposes two separate tracks for good employees (in the context of a high-tech company):

Naturally, salaries need to progress as well. Giving a rise or a promotion (alternatively?) at least once a year is good practice in China.

Do you agree with this? Do you think it is applicable here?

–

PS: if you want Inspection Servic. Just click here. Thanks!

Article Source: qualityinspection

quality check

Sunchine Inspection, a professional one-stop international inspection provider, focus on providing more flexible and humanized inspection serviceto clients from all over the world.

Sunchine Inspection, Thinking for you and doing for you!

China Office

Room 2203, 22/F, Building 03, Zhongtai

International Plaza, 311, Middle Jiangdong

Road, 210019 - Nanjing - R.P.China

Tel: 0086-25-6809 3658

Fax: 0086-25- 8609 3678

E-mail: francois.shi@sunchineconsulting.com

Contact: Mr. Francois SHI

Managing Director in China Office

Mob: 0086-18951633559

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BY RENAUD ANJORAN

Many importers negotiate a shipment date (ETD) with their Chinese suppliers before orders are issued, and then fail to follow up on the production schedule.

I think they would avoid a lot of bad surprises if they asked for regular updates.

The danger of flying blind

Chinese suppliers know that asking for 3 weeks of delay is usually rejected. The purchaser might respond “if you ship that late, you’ll have to pay air freight”, or “in that case, the letter of credit won’t be valid anymore; the order is canceled”.

So what do savvy exporters do? They don’t reveal the situation clearly and in advance. They wait until 1 or 2 weeks before original ETD, and they announce a one-week delay “because the materials arrived late”. Then another 5 days “because of power shortages”. Then another 5 days “because we don’t have enough workers”. And so on, until production is three weeks behind schedule.

This process can be devastating for an importer who promised a delivery date to his domestic customers, and who has to postpone it again and again.

How to avoid discovering delays at the last minute?

Before issuing an order, you should ask for a few milestones. Here is a list that is probably too long:

• Arrival of all materials/components (and, if relevant, inspection of these inputs)
• Start of bulk production
• Sending of production samples
• 20% of order is finished (and, if relevant, in-process inspection)
• 50% of order is finished
• 100% of order is packed (and, if relevant, final inspection)
• Ex-factory date (at least 2 days after final inspection)
• Shipment date (ETD)

Then, when you reach each milestone, you can ask your supplier whether it was achieved. If not, they should update all remaining dates.

Sending someone in the factory (e.g. your purchaser, an inspector…) is a good solution to check the production status. At the same time, you can verify product quality.

Can you afford to do this?

If you really need to stay on top of production, you should do as described above.

But you need to find the right balance.

If you place orders with many suppliers, you might not have time to follow all these dates. And if your orders are not very large, you might not want to bother your suppliers with so many updates.

In such cases, you can reduce the number of milestones.

For example, you can track these dates: start of production, 20% of order completed, 100% of order packed, and shipment date.

The most important is to keep some visibility over the production schedule.

Maybe some readers can share their experiences?

—

Article Source: qualityinspection

quality check agents

Sunchine Inspection, a professional one-stop international inspection provider, focus on providing more flexible and humanized inspection serviceto clients from all over the world.

Sunchine Inspection, Thinking for you and doing for you!

China Office

Room 2203, 22/F, Building 03, Zhongtai

International Plaza, 311, Middle Jiangdong

Road, 210019 - Nanjing - R.P.China

Tel: 0086-25-6809 3658

Fax: 0086-25- 8609 3678

E-mail: francois.shi@sunchineconsulting.com

Contact: Mr. Francois SHI

Managing Director in China Office

Mob: 0086-18951633559

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BY RENAUD ANJORAN

On Tuesday morning (in 2 days), the Sourcing Forum of the European Chamber of Commerce in China will hold this seminar in Shenzhen:

How we hire, train, and evaluate our internal QC inspectors:

Experience sharing in inspectors management.

Two speakers, from local buying offices, will share their experiences.

After that, I will be moderating a panel discussion with these 2 speakers, and with Hubert from AKA Outspring (who trains inspectors).

We will focus on these general topics:

• What profiles we try to hire as internal inspectors;
• How we train our internal inspectors;
• How we manage our internal inspectors, and what documents guide them in their work;
• How we evaluate and reward our internal inspectors, to keep them in the long run;
• What type of problems we have had with internal inspectors, and what we do to avoid them.

And we will also try to go more in depth:

• Do your inspectors only do inspections? How to manage seasonal productions?
• Do you have a QC department, totally separate from the merchandisers/purchasers?
• Do you send merchandisers/purchasers in inspection from time to time? Regularly? Never?
• Do your inspectors give advice to the factory on the way to correct quality problems? How does this work?
• Where do problems come from? Negligence and laziness? Repeated contact with the same suppliers? Insufficient training? Loose guidelines and imprecise checklist?

I hope to see you there.

Article Source: qualityinspection