Hello,
I am new to the forum so if this is already discussed somewhere else please point me in the right direction.
My situation is that I was recently hired (I'm 2 months in) to develop a quality management system for a California based hand tool company. The vast majority of the products are manufactured in China. We currently employ 2 people who work in China (full time) to visit each vendor regularly to perform product acceptance inspections. Having the 2 people in China has gone a long way to improve the product quality or so I've been told. They currently spend a lot of time traveling to and from each vendor with calibrated measurement equipment and aren't able to perform a very thorough inspection on every product prior to kitting the final product. The inspection plans and subsequent quality related processes are still being developed but will require more in depth product inspection than what is currently being performed. Currently only about 50-75% of the items are being inspected and most of those items are only being visually inspected.
My question is how do companies typically handle quality inspections in a foreign country?
My initial thought was to setup an inspection/warehouse office in China that they can work from instead of traveling to and from each vendor for inspections. This seems like the most logical step to me but I am not familiar with what it would take to setup an office in China so I was hoping to hear what other companies do in similar situations.
I am new to the forum so if this is already discussed somewhere else please point me in the right direction.
My situation is that I was recently hired (I'm 2 months in) to develop a quality management system for a California based hand tool company. The vast majority of the products are manufactured in China. We currently employ 2 people who work in China (full time) to visit each vendor regularly to perform product acceptance inspections. Having the 2 people in China has gone a long way to improve the product quality or so I've been told. They currently spend a lot of time traveling to and from each vendor with calibrated measurement equipment and aren't able to perform a very thorough inspection on every product prior to kitting the final product. The inspection plans and subsequent quality related processes are still being developed but will require more in depth product inspection than what is currently being performed. Currently only about 50-75% of the items are being inspected and most of those items are only being visually inspected.
My question is how do companies typically handle quality inspections in a foreign country?
My initial thought was to setup an inspection/warehouse office in China that they can work from instead of traveling to and from each vendor for inspections. This seems like the most logical step to me but I am not familiar with what it would take to setup an office in China so I was hoping to hear what other companies do in similar situations.