A crucial feature of successful businesses is the quality of their products. Getting quality products is essential, but maintaining that level of quality over time is equally as important. As such, any organization looking to serve customers needs a comprehensive quality inspection procedure.
A quality inspection procedure is a step-by-step process designed to check products to ensure they meet specific standards. This process is hugely important. In this article, we’ll highlight and explain the significance and procedure of quality inspections. This will help you ensure the goods you buy in China are of top quality.
Why Do You Need Quality Inspections?
Quality inspection is necessary to guarantee the accuracy and standard of your products. In fact, if you neglect quality checks for your business, you’re at risk of costly consequences. For instance, in 2006, Cadbury Schweppes had to recall 1 million chocolate bars due to the salmonella scare. With a top-quality inspection procedure, this could have been avoided.
Here’s why you need a quality inspection procedure for your business.
Build and maintain a reputation
For new brands, it can be difficult to build loyalty with customers in the best of times, but if product quality is low there’s an even slimmer likelihood that they will extend brands a second chance. For this reason, your products need to have a consistent standard. Likewise, for the big names, quality inspection helps seal the trust of consumers.
Cost reduction
When you correctly follow a procedure for quality inspection, you save money. If you import defective goods, you’ll spend double to return and purchase new goods. These extra costs are avoidable if you check for product quality in the first place.
Organizational management
Even where there are quality checks, mistakes can still occur. But, this time, you can hold someone responsible instead of playing the blame game. By doing this, you effectively avoid similar incidents in the future.
Profitable customers
When your customers are sure of your products’ quality, they tell friends about your products. In turn, this attracts more customers and increases profits.
The Procedure for Quality Inspection
You already know that quality inspection is essential. Now, let’s discuss the whole process. What needs to be checked? When and where do you need to do these checks? These are some of the questions will answer.
Truthfully, it’s best to have quality checks all through the production cycle. That is because mistakes can occur at any point. Some of the times you need your quality inspection procedure include:
Before the production process
Before production, every manufacturing element needs to be inspected thoroughly. The devices, the people, and other resources and materials that produce goods need quality checks. You start reviewing from the pre-production stage until about 20% of production is complete. For those looking to import products in bulk, this is the same as pre-shipment inspections.
Let’s consider a scenario where your primary product is a pie. Before production, your quality inspection procedure should check the raw materials and other devices. After that, you can proceed to make one pie, which you must inspect well. If the final product is right, you can move to full production while still reviewing.
Throughout the production process
While the production process is ongoing, some unintentional defects may occur. Performing quality checks during production can help you detect the mistakes quickly and avert costly errors. When you discover errors during production, you can quickly make adjustments to the process.
For example, if you produce milkshakes, and you discover some dirt particles during production. You can easily pause and clean the machinery before you continue production.
After production
When you’re producing goods, you should carry out timely checks. For instance, after a day’s production of milkshakes, you should check all products at random. That way, you’ll have the chance to discover any errors which you can avoid in future production.
On the other hand, if you produce all goods at once, you ought to carry out thorough checks of every single product.
Before and after distribution
After producing goods, you need to distribute to make sales. Whether you’re selling directly or supplying through shipments, you must follow a quality inspection procedure.
For instance, if you’re shipping goods to another country, there are ISO standards to follow. You can run final checks on the goods and the cargo before you distribute them. When goods are in the market, you can still run quality checks. You can ask customers for reviews to check if the final products meet the standards.
Now that we know the periods in which we can inspect quality, let’s discuss the process. There are some things you must do to ascertain the quality of the goods you’re bringing in from China.
Here are some of the keys:
Determine your standards
The first step for any quality inspection procedure is to establish the standard requirements. That way, you know what to look out for when checking your products. Furthermore, each department involved in the exportation and distribution process should have different standards.
In many cases, there are traditional associations that govern the standard for different industries. For example, the health industry has organizations like W.H.O, which set the standard. Additionally, these standards need to be reasonable and measurable. Perfect examples of standards for your customer support team can be:
- Resolving a customer’s request within 2 hours
- Answer all customer emails before closing time.
Establish the crucial standards
Indeed, you want your whole production process to be of top-notch quality, but you need to determine the essential standards to execute. That way, you can maintain quality quite effectively. Also, you can decide which aspects of the business to channel efforts to.
Let’s say you manage a banquet hall; keeping the room well-lit is an excellent standard, but attending to customer’s requests is of utmost importance. It’s better to channel your focus to customer satisfaction and fix the lights later. This school of thought can also be applied to the importation and exportation of products.
Manage your operations
Even when you know the standards, you need an organizational structure to follow the requirements. Firstly, your employees need to be aware of the criteria that guide their work. You also need to create seamless SOPs for all spheres of your business. That way, every aspect of business aligns with the standard requirements.
Results and feedback
An essential part of the quality control procedure is checking results. After production, you should review all sections of the production process. Likewise, you can get feedback from customers on your products. Since they see the products from a different perspective, they may see things you may not.
Development
The primary essence of quality control is to improve the quality of your products. When you receive quality results and receive feedback, there still needs to be an improvement.
If there are errors, you need to trace the source and correct them to standard. Your products can’t always be perfect, but quality control shows you where to improve.
Conclusion
A quality inspection procedure doesn’t only check the quality of the products you’re importing. It also improves the business as a whole. Quality checks should be present throughout the importation and delivery process. Once you understand and follow quality standards, improving the quality of the products you buy in China becomes easy.
Here at Jonble, we know the essence of quality control in any business. We have crucial on-the-job experience, too. We successfully handle factory audits, QC inspections, and product testing, among other services. We can provide valuable information for companies to help improve their importation and exportation process. Let us help your business grow and operate at the highest standard. Book an appointment with us today!