Chinese rubbish!

[Daydream believer]

Not so in my experience. They will take the order, ignore the specs and make it the way they want.
If you're not fussy , that might be good enough, if you're fussy, it may well not be.

We had to catalogue what faults were acceptable, as the spec we had successfully given the British fabricators was useless with them, they just did not follow it and we had to add a QA to the process to inspect fro faults that process management would have avoided.

We would have stayed with British if we had an option, but were driven by corporate directives.

It may occur to you that perhaps it is you ( being your co not you personally) who needs to learn to adapt to how to specify. This is something that has to be learned by not only the supplier but the specifier as well. This is not only an issue far east but in the EU as well. That is why the EU has tried to establish the same rules right across its borders
As far as you complain about corporate decisions it may have been hassle to you but one assumes you are paid to deal with problems anyway. So in the end the corporation has had a cheaper product. They do not necessarily worry if you ( meaning those who are responsible for sorting the orders) have a bit of hassle.
Please do not think that this is not a critisism of you it is just a statement of how things work

 

[chewi]

It may occur to you that perhaps it is you ( being your co not you personally) who needs to learn to adapt to how to specify. This is something that has to be learned by not only the supplier but the specifier as well. This is not only an issue far east but in the EU as well. That is why the EU has tried to establish the same rules right across its borders
As far as you complain about corporate decisions it may have been hassle to you but one assumes you are paid to deal with problems anyway. So in the end the corporation has had a cheaper product. They do not necessarily worry if you ( meaning those who are responsible for sorting the orders) have a bit of hassle.
Please do not think that this is not a critisism of you it is just a statement of how things work

No personal offence or criticism taken.

If they used the material we said ( as the British did) it would be good, but they didn't and it manifested in faults they did not screen.
It caused our customers not to be served because the non-compliant product took months to arrive and be replaced after our guys had to be sent out there to supervise. The cost was more in the end for less quality and a reduced service to our customers, a lose-lose result, so cheap is not necessarily good (nor even reduced cost).

Our guys did not want to go there either. 3 months in China away from family & hobbies is not the job they signed up to.

Our buyers often get discounted electronic components that do not solder well in our eco-sensitive processes, they pat themselves on the back for their discount while we have to manually rework the solder joints.
Again cheap is not necessarily good (nor even reduced cost).

 

[SunnyGirl]

Pay someone £1 to do a job and you will get £1 worth of quality... If the companies that sub the work cared more for quality than profit then...

I'll second that. Absolute waste of time with some specific products, my new moto is spend a little more and at least you'll have something that lasts.

 

[GreekYiannis]

I dont know the truth of this anecdote but suspect it to be pretty likely to be true - one of the large European car manufacturers was looking to outsource production of cams, the specification was sent to a number of overseas factories and included a line that said no more than 1 in 1000 parts should be outside the specification. Somw weeks later the production samples arrived and from one factory in Japan there was a box of 999 perfectly made examples with one separately wrapped with a note to say that it had been specially made to be out of tollerance as requested.

To my mind this illustrates there is more to manufacture than writing a perfect specification, interpretation has a lot to do with it too.

Wow! Trust the Japanese to be precise. That's a great story. I have one like it.
I went on a visit to the factory of Triumph Motorcycles in England where our group watched Crankshafts being finished. We were invited to measure three crankshafts (all for cars), one made in China, one from Porsch in Germany and one from Toyota in Japan. The Chinese tolerance was 30 thou (a real rattler if ever there was one) the German shaft came in at 8 thou and the Japanese shaft topped the lot at only 4 thou. The chap in charge then held up a Triumph motorcycle crankshaft and put it in their finishing machine. Using the same built-in laser measuring device as was used for the other shafts, we watched as the Triumph shaft was finished. The tolerance came down from 21, to 13 and then 4 and then 0. ie no tolerance from a perfect circle. We were skeptical and so the shaft was passed around our group as we hand-measured it with Vernier gauges. And lo and behold, the tolerance was zero.
We were then asked which motorcycle (or car) we'd rather have. The answer was easy.

 

[macd]

...Course you know where Triumph's CNC machinery comes from, don't you?

 

[prv]

The Chinese tolerance was 30 thou (a real rattler if ever there was one) the German shaft came in at 8 thou and the Japanese shaft topped the lot at only 4 thou. The chap in charge then held up a Triumph motorcycle crankshaft and put it in their finishing machine. Using the same built-in laser measuring device as was used for the other shafts, we watched as the Triumph shaft was finished. The tolerance came down from 21, to 13 and then 4 and then 0. ie no tolerance from a perfect circle.

Of course, that was a specially made piece to show off to the visitors. Was the everyday production up to that standard?

Pete

 

[GreekYiannis]

Of course, that was a specially made piece to show off to the visitors. Was the everyday production up to that standard?

Pete

Oh I assure you it wasn't. We were some seriously skeptical bikers but we saw lots of other evidence that standards in other parts of their manufacturing was equally high. I was riding a Honda Pan-Euro at that time and have actually never owned a Triumph - but I would, without hesitation.