China Manufacturing Decoded
 

China Manufacturing Decoded

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Join Renaud Anjoran, Founder & CEO of Sofeast, in this podcast aimed at importers who develop their own products as he discusses the hottest topics and shares actionable tips for manufacturing in China & Asia today! WHO IS RENAUD? Renaud is a French ISO 9001 & 14001 certified lead auditor, ASQ certified Quality Engineer and Quality Manager who has been working in the Chinese manufacturing industry since 2005. He is the founder of the Sofeast group that has over 200 staff globally and offers services (QA, product development & engineering, project management, Supply Chain Management, product compliance, reliability testing), contract manufacturing, and 3PL fulfillment for importers and businesses who develop their own products and buyers from China & SE Asia. WHY LISTEN? We‘ll discuss interesting topics for anyone who develops and sources their products from Asian suppliers and will share Renaud‘s decades of manufacturing experience, as well as inviting guests from the industry to get a different viewpoint. Our goal is to help you get better results and end up with suppliers and products that exceed your expectations!

Episodes

9 Key Questions When Developing A New Product (Part 1)

Friday Apr 28, 2023

Friday Apr 28, 2023

Sofeast's CEO Renaud is joined by Adrian from the team and they're going to go through 9 of the key questions businesses who're developing new products commonly need answers to. 

Here's part 1 of this podcast covering questions 1-4...

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's episode.

01:22 - 1. What is the target market for the product?

07:51 - How to do market research.

13:26 - 2. What problem does the product solve for the customer?

23:03 - 3. What is the unique selling proposition of the product?

26:57 - 4. What features and functionalities should the product have?

42:44 - Wrapping up.

 

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How To Do A Pilot Run Effectively? (Feat. Andrew Amirnovin)

Friday Apr 21, 2023

Friday Apr 21, 2023

In this episode...

Sofeast's reliability expert, Andrew Amirnovin, talks us through why pilot runs are so important, the best practices and benefits, and how to plan for yours in order for it to be a success. If you're mass-producing your products you're not going to want to miss this episode!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic.

01:10 - What is a pilot run?

02:46 - Important ways to get the best out of pilot runs.

10:12 - Common problems that the pilot run will uncover that you will want to avoid.

13:17 - How it helps to control processes.

17:50 - 5 steps to plan for before you start your pilot run.

  1. Consider the scope of the pilot run. 
  2. What are the main objectives? 
  3. Who will perform it? 
  4. Do you have a plan to carry it out? 
  5. How will you document and evaluate the pilot run? 

25:50 - How does the cost of doing pilot runs compare with not doing them?

27:48 - Do Asian manufacturers have the habit of doing pilot runs?

29:16 - In conclusion.

 

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Top 10 Mistakes Made By New Buyers In Asia

Friday Apr 14, 2023

Friday Apr 14, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud and Adrian outline 10 common mistakes that new buyers make when buying from Asian manufacturers, especially in China. Avoid these pitfalls and you'll be far more likely to develop good relationships and get your products on time, on budget, and at the expected quality standard!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and talking about the Hong Kong electronics fair in April 2023.

04:53 - Exploring the top mistakes that new buyers make when buying from China and other Asian countries.

Renaud wrote this list of mistakes in 2011, but it's still relevant today!

05:55 - 1. Always pursuing the lowest price.

12:37 - 2. Agreeing on crazy payment terms with a supplier.

16:16 - 3. You fail to inspect product quality before shipment. 

19:07 - 4. Failing to realize that pre-production samples are selling tools.

21:40 - 5. Not trusting the supplier at all and being obvious about it.

24:47 - 6. Not keeping 2-3 weeks of padding in the shipment schedule.

27:44 - 7. Having no visibility over your supply chain.

29:27 - 8. You forget to describe and document an important product feature or your packaging requirements.

32:47 - 9. Hoping that an unsatisfactory manufacturer will improve over time.

37:45 - 10. Not registering your trademark in China when buying from China.

40:43 - Wrapping up.

 

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8 Hardware Product Development Tips for Software Companies

Friday Apr 07, 2023

Friday Apr 07, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud and Andrew talk about how to develop hardware products specifically for software companies used to using an agile design approach (often SCRUM) for software products that now need to create a new hardware product to support their business (such as a device that runs on the software).

They share their thoughts on the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman, warnings about the limitations of the agile design approach where hardware is concerned that you'll need to be aware of and plan for, and 8 tips for software companies who're in this position to help you understand where other software companies often go wrong.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings & today's topic.

01:56 - What's the difference between traditional project management and the agile approach?

08:18 - Why is the agile design approach so popular with software companies?

11:07 - 13 points about hardware design is different from software design from the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman.

  1. Less evident modularity
  2. Longer design cycles
  3. Higher functional interdependence
  4. Poor refactoring opportunities
  5. Higher need for specialization
  6. Longer time to demonstrate function
  7. Higher cost of change
  8. More demanding range of operation
  9. Different testing demands
  10. More secondary design activities
  11. More challenges in developing specifications
  12. Higher difficulty proving a task is done
  13. Higher price of premature commitment

23:20 - 8 points that companies that are used to running agile design for software development tend to overlook when developing new hardware products.

23:39 - 1. Agile is good, but planning and documentation can't be skipped.

31:35 - 2. You need to freeze the product design (including freezing the firmware) at one point.

33:48 - 3. An engineering change management process must be taken seriously from a certain point.

35:46 - 4. You need supply chain visibility and to manage it yourself.

39:15 - 5. You will need a quality function.

42:21 - 6. BOM, drawings, schematics, etc. are all as important as software code.

47:55 - 7. Product reliability is important, especially if they have a "product as a service" business model.

52:46 - 8. Product compliance is an entire topic to take seriously.

54:37 - Summary and wrapping up.

 

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How to comply with CE and UKCA (for general consumer electro-mechanical products)?

Friday Mar 31, 2023

Friday Mar 31, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud and Adrian are back and talking about how to comply with CE and UKCA regulations as an indication that they comply with the safety, health, and environmental requirements of the EU and Great Britain. They cover what these requirements are, the process to become compliant, how and why the UK is diverging, and more. No matter where your business is based, if you sell products in these markets you'll need to add the CE or UKCA mark to them.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic.

00:38 - What is CE and what kinds of products does it cover?

04:22 - How to obtain CE marking: Overview.

09:23 - Who is 'the manufacturer?'

11:20 - What are the risks if you don't follow the CE compliance process?

20:38 - What's the difference between CE and UKCA?

24:51 - Why UKCA is not required for Northern Ireland.

27:06 - EU 'harmonised standards' are called 'designated standards' in the UK.

28:16 - The UK government is threatening to repeal a lot of EU laws due to Brexit. How realistic is this?

31:25 - Why seeing CE-marked products when sourcing from China might mean nothing at all.

35:35 - What notified bodies are and when do they need to be involved?

41:21 - Wrapping up.

 

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Quality Management Challenges in China (Feat. Clive Greenwood)

Friday Mar 24, 2023

Friday Mar 24, 2023

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and senior compliance officer and friend of the show Clive Greenwood are back together and talking about the challenges of quality management in China. You'll learn about communication, supply chain transparency, cultural factors that affect quality, what an effective quality management system needs to include, and a lot more in this bumper episode!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introduction to our guest, Clive and this episode's topic: Challenges of Quality Management in China.

02:52 - Why do importers face challenges when trying to ensure consistent quality, reliability, compliance, etc, from Chinese suppliers?

03:20 - 1. Poor communication.

08:15 - 2. Working with the wrong kind of supplier that you cannot really trust.

13:26 - SMEs have 2 common due diligence & quality approaches when working with Chinese suppliers depending on the type of product development required.

16:45 - 3. A supplier who doesn't provide supply chain transparency negatively impacts quality.

20:48 - 4. Expecting the supplier to inform you about quality issues independently without you doing your own due diligence is a mistake.

23:19 - 5. There is no concept of separation of powers at many Chinese suppliers: "If the boss says it, do it."

28:36 - The role of factory audits.

32:29 - 6. A lack of supply chain transparency, traceability, and compliance.

37:37 - 7. Cheap and/or fast will usually come with a reduction of quality in the minds of Chinese suppliers.

42:59 - 8. Inspecting quality too late and not enforcing your quality standard.

44:37 - 9. A lack of risk thinking and acting on problems when they occur.

52:07 - If production is not ok, that failure is probably on you the buyer.

53: 58 - Summary: How to successfully manage quality in China?

54:35 - Wrapping up.

 

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Secrets of Implementing Design for Reliability (Feat. Andrew Amirnovin)

Friday Mar 17, 2023

Friday Mar 17, 2023

In this episode...

Sofeast's reliability expert, Andrew Amirnovin, joins Adrian to explore the topic of Design for Reliability (DfR) in detail. He explains the process you need to go through to avoid unreliable products, some warnings about what an unreliable product may end up looking or behaving like, and how the DfR process should be implemented and some commonly overlooked secrets so you know how to implement it yourself.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic of DfR.

01:08 - What is DfR and its objectives?

04:29 - What makes an unreliable product?

20:26 - What are some of the secrets to applying DfR that people need to know about?

23:08 - Recap: The best engineering practices for reliability.

24:32 - The process we follow to reduce our clients' reliability risks.

28:37 - Wrapping up.

 

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BONUS: China Opens Its Borders To ALL Travellers (March 15th 2023)

Wednesday Mar 15, 2023

Wednesday Mar 15, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud and Adrian from Sofeast share the positive news that China is reopening its borders to all travellers today, March 15th 2023, including issuing tourist visas now. After 3 long years, we look at changes that might affect business travellers who are eager to visit suppliers in particular.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings - What is the news? (China issuing all types of visas as of March 15 '23)

03:19 - Chinese business visas, and changes to applying for them.

08:30 - The points system used for work visas.

09:52 - Tourist visas are now available!

11:48 - Why the end of Covid has caused the loosening of entry restrictions now.

13:18 - Why PCR tests probably won't be required from travellers moving forward in most cases.

15:54 - Wrapping up.

 

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ISO 37301 - From Quality Management To Compliance Management (Feat. Clive Greenwood & Sean Li)

Friday Mar 10, 2023

Friday Mar 10, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud welcomes Clive Greenwood and Sean Li of the BSI onto the podcast. They talk about the ISO 3730 standard for compliance management, how to implement it, how it is being adopted in China and how this affects you if you work with Chinese suppliers, and more.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic and guests.

03:21 - What is the ISO 37301 standard about?

06:25 - What is a compliance management system and how does it fit in with other common standards such as ISO 9001, 14001, etc?

12:29 - What does a compliance management system in China look like, and is the government taking it seriously?

17:24 - How about traceability, when supply chains in China have been historically opaque? Will businesses struggle to comply?

25:11 - How best to implement ISO 37301 along with other specific standards?

30:16 - Looking at a company’s organization, its checks & balances, its values, etc. 

36:00 - Summary: The importance of an independent auditor to supervise the compliance management system.

37:25 - Wrapping up.

 

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Why are assembly fixtures important for productivity & quality?

Friday Mar 03, 2023

Friday Mar 03, 2023

In this episode...

Renaud, Paul, and Adrian are talking about assembly and checking fixtures. You'll learn what they are, how they work, and when to work on designing them.

If improving the speed, consistency, and quality of your products during mass production is important to you, as well as reducing costs, then you need to consider implementing fixtures in production to spur these improvements.

The same can be said for checking quality, too, as you'll see how in-line checking fixtures help you to avoid problems during production that can result in defective products creeping through.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic: What happens if you have repeated quality issues from your manufacturing supplier?

01:17 - What are assembly fixtures? (+ examples).

11:00 - Benefits of assembly fixtures.

11:37 - Fixtures' role in mistake-proofing.

16:04 - Why good product design must include manufacturing process design.

20:24 - The timeline of when to work on process engineering and fixtures.

22:50 - Are fixtures hard to build and what materials can be used?

23:37 - Who pays for and owns the fixtures?

26:50 - What are checking fixtures (used for QC)?

27:59 - Examples of checking fixtures.

30:52 - How to decide where and how you need to be checking quality during production.

36:20 - The ROI of using fixtures.

38:15 - Why pilot runs are helpful for identifying where fixtures are needed.

39:24 - Wrapping up.

 

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