4 Words on QC: Awareness Good, Ambiguity Bad

12/30/2009 - Part of TCBN's Quality Series
As founder and General Manager of InTouch Quality Manufacturing, Andrew Reich is on the ground in China.  Based in Shenzhen, he ensures his clients' China-manufactured purchases are first-class for each shipment through inspection, testing and product certification.





TCBN: Andrew Reich, you have been in factories, managing quality and buying interactions in China since 1999. You founded Intouch (Quality) Manufacturing services to provide something that you thought was missing there. Tell us, first, how things have changed in the ten years you've been in the quality field in China.

REICH: Well, you know, I think we've seen a lot of media recently covering quality control in China and the quality lapses that we've seen with lead paint and melamine in baby formula in China; and a lot of that has changed the awareness level, now, in China for Chinese manufacturers. I think if you look at the past 5 years, and especially my experience, meeting with and talking with factory owners on a daily basis, is that over the past five years and with media reports, the awareness has been heightened, so factories are more aware of issues like lead, issues like cadmium.

When you bring an issue like this out to Chinese manufacturers it's not like it was ten years ago, where they just had absolutely no clue what you were talking about, no framework for the conversation. Now when you bring these issues up, they do understand that these are issues that need to be looked at, and especially in the past few years we’ve seen they’re even gaining an understanding that it’s not okay to change a specification, or change a product's materials without first getting authority from the buyer to do that. Those are concepts that really over the past ten years we've seen factories come to terms with and understand to some degree.

TCBN: So there's the idea that quality and quality specifications and everything that goes into quality are in fact real issues and they can be very serious issues.

REICH: Right, right.

TCBN: At the same time, a lot of quality issues arise because the issues are on the buyer side, the buyer is not clear enough. The specifications or the need for documentation or the need for process is not really laid out in a way that ensures enough transparency in manufacturing, that the Chinese manufacturer knows everything that's expected. That's a lesson I hear in various places in the quality field. Is that something that you come across at Intouch Manufacturing, and what do you do about it?

REICH: That's right. And, you know, a lot of the issues that have been brought out - and what the media focuses on too - really has stemmed from the fact that a lot of the buyers and a lot of the people on the sourcing and importing side come to China with absolutely no specifications and no framework for doing the quality. That is something that my company, Intouch Quality, focuses on in terms of creating very specific, very black-and-white, very unambiguous documentation and templates that we allow our buyers and the factories that they are working with to fill in the details so that the expectations are clear right from the beginning. And that has eliminated a lot of the issues that we’ve seen.

TCBN: And so, for what kind of client or customer is that important? In the past ten years, particularly as China's exports have proliferated into every manufactured good in the world, certainly buyers and importers have a choice of inspection services. They don't have to work with somebody like Intouch Quality. They can hire a variety of inspectors to show up, conduct a quality inspection and whether it passes or fails they just leave, without any engagement of the buyer before the inspection takes place or engagement of the buyer after. So it really is possible for people who don't know beans about what they're buying to put in an order, have an inspector show up and take the shipment – just roll the dice. It sounds like that's not the part of the world that your clients work in.

REICH: You touch on a good point, Janet, which is that there's a lot of choice out there now for buyers. There’s a lot more buyers because of the advent of Global Sources and Alibaba and the access that people have to buying directly from China right now. The number of buyers and the number of small and medium sized buyers has increased in a huge way. And with that we've seen a lot more choice for these buyers for the quality control service that they need. So whereas previously the market was basically dominated only existed some large testing and inspection companies whose focus, and really their profits, came from lab testing services.

There's just basically providing more than anything a photo documentation of what the goods appear like - the appearance of the goods in the factory, which is a valuable service for people who have very little connecting with what they're buying, like premium and promotional buyers .

TCBN: Yes, you can count the cartons, make sure they're all there, make sure they're all taped and that sort of thing. It’s worth something.

REICH: If it's red and not blue, basically.

TCBN: For sure.

REICH: On the other hand, services that have developed for people that have a real concern for quality and a focus on quality, which is what Intouch does. We basically work with brands and importers who generally have been manufacturing products in the United States for a long time so they have to live up to their brand names, their reputation for high quality, American made products and now they're just augmenting with Chinese manufacturing; or they are for one reason or another very concerned with the quality of the product.

TCBN: And do you give them a longer term service? I know you live most of the time in Shenzhen and you've got people over there as well. Is that what’s valuable to them?

REICH: What's valuable to them is the ability to not just be a camera and a set of eyes there on the ground, but actually taking a sincere interest in the product and acting as a representation of their own company there on the ground in China.

TCBN: And you’d like to find out more information on Andrew Reich’s company, the URL is ... tell us.

REICH: It's www.intouchquality.com.

TCBN: Thank you Andrew, enjoy your holiday in the US and we’ll catch up with you later.


Andrew Reich is also the author of QualityWars blog on quality control in China.