What is the most significant point when importing goods from China? Price, payment, or quality? Obviously, the answer is quality control. The purpose of quality control is to ensure that customers get what they ordered without any quality problems and to ensure reliable product production. That means, the overall goal of quality control is to produce products that meet the customer’s product requirements.
What Is Quality Control?
When foreign importers buy products from China, they need to strictly control the quality of the products. Therefore, the need for quality control came into being. For customers, the first thing they have to do is make a quality control checklist in advance. The manufacturer produces the item according to the parameters initially set by the customer. The production of the product needs to meet and exceed the quality parameters listed by the customer.
In addition, ethical production standards are also aspects that quality control parameters should focus on. Manufacturers and suppliers should be aware that quality control QC and quality assurance QA are definitely two different things.
Quality control means strict production standards. This means that during the production process, manufacturers implement methods that can ensure quality control parameters. It focuses more on an initial assessment of the production process.
QC focuses on product orientation, which ensures that product production results conform to the supplier’s pre-production settings. While QA is more process oriented, it ensures that all necessary steps have been taken to guarantee QC parameters.
Benefits of Quality Control when Importing from China
When you importing goods from China, quality control is very important and it can bring you several benefits.
Quality Awareness
For foreign buyers, it is very important to pay attention to quality control. Not only does it ensure product quality, but it is one of the key factors for its success in the market.
In addition, quality awareness means you can pass on product requirements without reservation to the manufacturer. The manufacturer will also provide you with high-quality products in accordance with the specified parameters.
Customer Satisfaction
How to make customers satisfied with your products is the most concerned issue for every seller. That’s the reason why ensuring quality is your primary goal.
When you have a good sense of quality control, then the quality of your products can be strictly controlled, so that you can produce products that meet consumer expectations and further improve customer satisfaction.
Cost Reduction
With this approach to quality control, you can minimize the need for additional resources. Chinese suppliers will precisely produce according to your quality control standards.
Reduction of inspection charge
If the product is always under control during the production process, the cost of product inspection of the same batch can be reduced. Because quality control ensures the quality of the entire batch of products, a small sample can be taken for inspection at this time, thereby reducing inspection costs. This is good for buyers and manufacturers.
Improve Sales Margins
Products imported from China, with strict quality control, can become a hot cake in the market with high-quality manufactured products.
High-quality products will attract more customers’ buying interest. Understanding your customer’s needs and incorporating them into quality control will help streamline your production, resulting in higher sales profits.
Entities Responsible for Ensuring Quality Control in China
In China, there are 4 ways to participate in the management of quality control.
Internal Manufacturer Review
The first is the manufacturer’s self-check. This is beneficial for buyers because you don’t have anyone else involved in the quality control process, and it will reduce costs and simplify the inspection process.
However, many Chinese manufacturers are more concerned with their own interests than quality. Even though manufacturers have their own dedicated team of QC and QA inspectors, they still put their own interests first.
In the process of producing a product, in order to save more money and time cost, the manufacturer will produce and deliver the product as fast as possible. But the consequence of that is that product quality is often overlooked.
For various reasons, such as lack of professional quality inspection personnel and equipment, etc., manufacturers will submit false reports. In this case, the manufacturer’s self-test results often do not meet expectations.
Visit the Company
You can choose to visit the site in person, or send employees to participate in the quality control process to ensure that the company has all the required quality control standards and parameters. The advantage of this is that you can see the results of quality control more intuitively, but it means that you need to spend a lot of time and energy into it.
Hire the Purchasing Agent
You can choose to hire a purchasing agent to help you with quality control monitoring, and the purchasing agent will be responsible for finding you a company that ensures the quality control standards you need.
However, like most manufacturing companies, purchasing agents tend to favor personal interests. They may enter into agreements with third parties. In the process, they provide error reports to buyers and collect expensive commissions from the company.
Third Party Inspection Agency
You may also choose to hire a third party agency to serve you. They may be quality control agencies working in China. The advantage of hiring a third-party agency is that they are self-contained and independent of any company. They can complete quality control tests in different cities and between different suppliers and provide timely reports.
At the same time, third-party agencies have professional experience and literacy, and do not require you to spend extra money to train them. They can even provide practical quality control standards for different production companies.
China Quality Control Process
The process of QC includes 4 parts: pre-production inspection, production inspection, pre-shipment inspection and supervision of loading.
Pre-production inspection
This process happens before production. During this process, you need to ensure that the supplier has professional production equipment, well-trained staff, an internal strict quality control system, and more. It is best to visit in person to get the most authentic first-hand research.
This inspection has its purpose. You can find out which raw materials your suppliers will use. Whether they cut corners or use inferior materials can be reflected. In order to maximize profits, many suppliers often order defective raw materials before production.
Production inspection
In-line inspections are carried out during the production stage of products to ensure that the produced products meet quality control standards.
Usually, inspections are carried out when the first batch of products is produced. Because this makes it possible to assess whether changes are necessary for the first batch, which facilitates later production management. At the same time, it helps to save time for corrections later in production.
Pre-shipment inspection
For buyers, QC inspection before delivery is very important. Because some manufacturers will provide satisfactory reports in the early stage of inspection, but will ignore the quality control of products in the later stage. This may result in defective goods. Pre-shipment inspections ensure that suppliers deliver the correct batches.
In addition, it helps to minimize the mixing of defective products. Suppliers will mix defective products with good products in pursuit of more profit, which increases the risk of defective products entering the market.
If the final inspection results do not meet the quality control standards, the inspection team can ask the manufacturer to rework the product.
Supervision of loading
The purpose of this is to ensure that your cargo is loaded into the correct container, including quantity and quality. This will help minimize the risk of loading errors and ensure that the container is delivered to the correct cargo.
China Quality Control Report
The contents of quality control report should include 4 parts.
Product Quantity
The quantity should match the desired quantity requested by the buyer. Inspectors should report the exact quantity of product produced, based on reality.
Actual Defect
Inspection defects may exist in packaging, products or hang tags. The tolerance levels defined in the quality checklist will state the minimum number of defects. If the number of defective products exceeds a critical value, the inspection will be considered unacceptable. In addition to this, the inspection report should include pictures showing the number of defective products.
On-site Testing and Inspection
On-site testing is necessary to anticipate any problems that may arise with the product before it reaches the buyer. For example, for products with many accessories, it is necessary for the inspector to conduct a drop test on the outer box. That’s to simulate problems such as parts breaking due to collisions with cargo on board.
How To Choose Quality Control Company in China
Qualified Certification
The quality control company you want to choose should be properly licensed and certified. For this, ISO 9001 certification is necessary. You can also request a QASIQ license.
Professional Report
Quality control companies should be professional, and this professionalism should especially be reflected in the report. Qualified quality inspection companies should provide accurate and timely reports according to buyers’ requirements. In addition, they should also list the problems that arise during the inspection.
Other Services
A reliable product quality inspection company should provide various quality control services, including pre-production inspection, production inspection, pre-shipment inspection, container loading supervision, etc.
Professional Knowledge
The company you hire for quality control should be an expert. Otherwise, there is no reference to the inspection report where this company is located. Only by hiring a professional company can any feasible operation required in production be ensured.
In any trading process, price should always be a factor to consider. While ensuring quality checks, you also have to factor in price. The company you choose should be able to meet your product inspection needs in a timely manner within the quoted price range given.
FAQ of China Quality Control
What is the Standard Quality Inspection Price in China?
Standard quality inspection price in China is $180 to $300 per inspection, some companies also offer discounts, it depends on your cooperation time.
How to Pay for Quality Control Services?
You can pay similar to freight forwarding services. This can be done using credit, PayPal, check, card or bank transfer.
What is the Average Turnaround Time for Product Quality Testing Services?
48 hours to 2 weeks on average.
How Long Does it Take to Get An Inspection Report?
It depends on the company conducting the inspection. Generally, it takes a few hours to a few days. This includes time to produce the report, review it and send it.
In the End
The above is the whole content of this article, if you have any questions, welcome to visit our website https://unionvisionchart.com.
Wish you all well~
