Chinaversary
I just had my Chinaversary, it’s now been fourteen years since I’ve first moved to China full time. It’s an easy date to remember, October 10th, 2010.
Like most anniversaries, it’s a good time to reflect on my time here, where I’ve been, and what’s next.
I’ve been traveling a lot recently. Everywhere that I land, I look for answers to the question I and many of my colleagues are asking, which is, “what is the next China?”
I’ve come to the conclusion that, at least for the next five years, for manufacturing, we are at best going to be in a situation of China and someplace else. Even then, for the vast majority of the production I see today, China is now and will be for the foreseeable future, the only reasonable option.
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Delivering Quality
Enquiries about quality control make up a fair share of the conversations that I have these days, and for good reason; it is one of the most frustrating and misunderstood aspects of sourcing products in Asia.
Unfortunately, a good amount of these conversations start with a question of what legal recourse a person might have against a supplier, now that a container of defective goods has already arrived to a warehouse in the USA (or worse, sent directly to Amazon!). When it comes to quality control, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I’ve been sourcing and manufacturing products in China for over two decades now, and in that time I’ve progressed through all of the stages from Anger to Resentment to Acceptance, and finally ended up with a program that works to get consistent output, at least for me. It’s this Quality Program that I spend a lot of time teaching. In this post I outline the fundamentals of the program that I use to manage production quality.
Michael Diliberto 