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

How To Validate Your New Hardware Product Idea In Investors’ Eyes?

Friday Oct 07, 2022

Friday Oct 07, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and Adrian from the team talk about what founders need to do in order to validate their new hardware product idea in the eyes of potential investors.

You'll learn about a huge blindspot that many founders have that can easily destroy their chances of success, what potential investors and manufacturers are looking for from a startup and its idea, and some tips on how to get information at an early stage that can positively influence your design before you have even invested in prototypes!

If you have a new product idea you want to bring to market, this episode is a must-listen!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings

00:25 - Pre-chat: Hong Kong has dropped quarantine and is open to visitors!

08:36 - Today's topic: How to validate your new hardware product idea in the eyes of investors?

12:18 - The 3 key risks faced by founders with a new hardware product idea.

14:01 - An example of market risk: A new energy-efficient cooking solution.

22:33 - What to do with the feedback from target customers?

25:59 - The minimum viable product for hardware startups.

27:54 - 2 key milestones investors use to validate a new product and the startup behind it.

30:07 - The Hardware Academy - a good place to get advice.

31:30 - No market research = Higher risk of project failure, lack of investment, and difficulty in working with the best manufacturers.

34:50 - Wrapping up.

 

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Best Mediums for Communicating with Chinese Suppliers

Friday Sep 30, 2022

Friday Sep 30, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran is back with Adrian from the team this week and they're discussing which communication medium is best for communicating with Chinese suppliers, why, and when it should be used. 

Learn about WeChat, email, project management software, DingTalk, and much more, as well as the importance of using clear working templates as opposed to 'freestyling' it!

Select the wrong medium and it can lead to a breakdown in communication, delays, quality issues, and dissatisfaction all round, so this episode will help you avoid those problems.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic

01:59 - Common issues that cause communication difficulties

06:43 - WeChat

12:46 - Email

16:11 - Project Management Software

19:31 - DingTalk

23:09 - Working templates

30:00 - Formal legally-enforceable agreements

33:41 - Why templates for deliverables are so important

38:03 - Wrapping up.

 

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How To Start Developing Your New Product (Feat. Liz Long)

Friday Sep 23, 2022

Friday Sep 23, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran is joined by special guest Liz Long, founder of Learn to Make a Product, a platform that supports customers to launch products, providing expert advice and assistance to set up their supply chains, develop products, and go through all of the steps needed to get to market!

American new product manufacturing expert Liz shares her own experience, best practices, and tips in this episode to help entrepreneurs and SMEs get an understanding of the first steps required to start developing their own new products.

If you've been sitting on your new product idea, hopefully, this episode will give you the impetus you need to start bringing it to market!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic: How to start developing your new product

01:27 - Who is Liz Long?

04:00 - How could a would-be entrepreneur start out with their new project and how long before they see 'success' after launch?

06:20 - How long would it take to be ready to launch?

07:40 - Benefits of private labelling VS custom product development from scratch.

14:06 - Are there product types that have a lower barrier to entry or lower investment required to get to market quickly?

20:14 - What tools, sites, and resources are helpful to someone who is developing a new product?

26:38 - Finding the right supplier/factory and if working with an intermediary is OK?

31:42 - The dangers of being overly optimistic when starting.

34:47 - Wrapping up.

 

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8 Secrets for Successfully Implementing a dFMEA (Feat. Andrew Amirnovin)

Friday Sep 16, 2022

Friday Sep 16, 2022

In this episode!

The Sofeast Group's reliability expert, Andrew Amirnovin, shares his 8 secrets for successfully implementing a dFMEA (Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis).

This approach will help you de-risk your product design at an early stage, greatly reducing the chances of failure once the product reaches customers.

Many businesses and staff members know what the dFMEA is, but not so many know the secrets to successfully implementing it so the preventive actions you come up with 'stick' and you enjoy long-lasting improvements.

 

Show Sections

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

01:29 - What is a dFMEA and its purpose?

04:40 - How to implement the dFMEA (10 steps included in the process)?

09:01 - The 8 secrets of dFMEA implementation that will set you up for success.

17:29 - Wrapping Up.

 

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What to do when a product inspection fails?

Friday Sep 09, 2022

Friday Sep 09, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and Adrian from the team are back and talking about something else you don't want to experience but may if you're unfortunate. A failed product inspection!

Renaud will explain to you why the type of inspection matters, a step-by-step process to follow to fix problems highlighted by a product inspection report now, and how to put corrective and preventive actions in place to stop the problem from reoccurring in future production runs.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings & Topic: What happens if a product inspection is failed?

01:56 - What kind of inspection has been failed?

03:42 - Actions you need to take to fix the problem/s now if a final inspection has been failed.

04:10 - 1. Insist that the manufacturer does NOT ship anything until the matter has been investigated and settled.

05:57 - 2. Examine your quality standard, the situation found by the inspector, and what the cause of the gap between them is.

17:56 - 3. Make the right people at the factory aware of the inspection report in a neutral manner to get their cooperation. 

20:43 - 4. Get the manufacturer to fix an issue.

25:12 - 5. Order another inspection before shipment to remove doubt.

26:14 - Preventing the same problem from occurring again in future.

32:54 - In summary.

 

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Calculating the Cash Needed to Prototype and Launch your New Product

Friday Sep 02, 2022

Friday Sep 02, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and Adrian kick off the episode by talking about Hong Kong's new and improved immigration and Covid procedures and the heatwaves and droughts in China that have been affecting manufacturing there.

The main topic is getting to grips with is calculating how much money is required for prototyping and then launching your new product - a popular question for many entrepreneurs and SMEs who aim to bring their new product concept to market!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings.

00:37 - How visiting Hong Kong in August 2022 has become easier.

04:20 - What effects are the heatwave and drought in China, especially in the Western provinces of Sichuan and Chongqing, having on manufacturing?

09:13 - The psychological side of launching a new product and how ambition affects a product launch.

14:46 - What are the finance numbers involved?

  • What's your investment required to be ready for manufacturing (NRE costs)? 
  • How much is the unit cost going to be? 
  • What will the selling price be?

22:59 - What's included in these costs? (action & item breakdown)

  1. NRE costs
  1. Total landed cost per unit (production & shipping cost)

32:39 - Why do many products end up being sold at a loss?

35:06 - Other 'hidden issues' that don't always show up in the calculations.

37:39 - In summary.

 

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How To Do A Product Failure Analysis?

Friday Aug 26, 2022

Friday Aug 26, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and Adrian from the team discuss product failure analysis. Hopefully, you never need to do one, but if you are hit with quality, reliability, or safety problems with your product during development or, more likely, in the field, it may be necessary to help you decide what to do. This is especially important if problems are severe enough to warrant a recall.

Renaud explains what a failure analysis is, when it may be required, and the FA methodology you can follow step-by-step with required actions per step.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings

00:45 - Today's topic: Product failure analysis.

01:18 - The 'firefighting' or 'scattershot' approach to problem-solving by many factories that doesn't work well.

What kinds of problems warrant performing a failure analysis?

Failure analysis may be required in these 2 scenarios:

06:27 - Failure analysis during new product development 

09:41 - Failure analysis after products have been shipped

19:02 - What failure analysis methodology could you follow?

0: Who will work on this analysis and what are the timelines and project context?

  1. Gather information 
  2. Document any information about the failure 
  3. First analysis 
  4. Deeper analysis 
  5. Containment, if needed 
  6. Corrective action plan 
  7. Corrective action implementation & follow-up 

35:45 - Wrap-up.

 

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How DVT & PVT Mistakes Result In Poor Quality Or Even Unsafe Products!

Friday Aug 19, 2022

Friday Aug 19, 2022

In this episode...

The Sofeast Group's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, is back on the pod with Adrian from the team and are discussing what happens if mistakes are made during the DVT and PVT phases of NPI process.

Electronics giant Philips has been in the news due to a huge recall of ventilators and sleep apnea machines that have, unfortunately, caused deaths and injuries. This got us to thinking: What could have caused such a problem to make it into the production of such sensitive medical devices, and what can we learn from this example?

Andrew explains that issues like this likely originate in the DVT stage of the NPI process, talks about what activities and testing are included, why they're necessary for your new product launch project and talks about how DVT issues spill over into PVT and then into mass production, too.

If you're bringing a new product to market, this story demonstrates why following a detailed new product introduction process that leaves no stone unturned when trying to find potential risks is crucial for manufacturing safe, high-quality, and reliable products.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings, introducing the topic: DVT & PVT, and activities during each NPI phase that are important to bring a successful product to market.

01:44 - What do the acronyms EVT/DVT/PVT mean?

04:42 - The risks of rushing into production without completing DVT thoroughly.

07:43 - The huge Philips medical device recall happening in Summer '22.

11:58 - What happens during DVT to help us avoid product risks and recalls?

16:39 - The need for a solid reliability growth plan.

19:44 - The temptation to rush into production and miss DVT steps.

27:25 - What a reliability engineer looks out for when devising the reliability test plan and use cases.

31:42 - What is PVT and why can it also cause a lot of product issues after production if steps are missed?

40:19 - Wrap up.

 

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How To Optimize QC Inspections & Use Preventive Measures To Get Better Quality Results?

Friday Aug 12, 2022

Friday Aug 12, 2022

In this episode...

Sofeast's podcasting duo, our CEO Renaud Anjoran and Adrian from the team are back to talk about strategies that importers who are placing large and valuable orders with their overseas manufacturers and performing a lot of product inspections can follow to optimize the inspection schedule to get better results and, perhaps, reduce costs without increasing risks, and upstream preventive measures that can be put in place to improve quality before and during production that reduce the need for as many inspections in the first place.

SMEs and larger companies that regularly do a lot of business with Asian manufacturers could benefit from cost and time savings and reduced risks with this advice.

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings

01:05 - Changes to Hong Kong Covid quarantine and news of Covid lockdowns in Yiwu (although not too severe).

11:02 - Today's topic: How to optimize QC inspections and get better results. Why would a business seek to do this?

16:22 - Adjusting inspection type, severity, and regularity could be a helpful cost-saving exercise.

18:26 - What does a business need to prepare before starting an optimization initiative like this?

23:38 - What information should we gather from the supplier's side?

35:35 - Which kinds of importers this upstream product development and process optimization is more relevant to?

37:03 - Delegating inspections to the supplier over time (without raising risks, hopefully).

41:56 - Wrap-up.

 

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Your Product Return Rate & How To Control It?

Friday Aug 05, 2022

Friday Aug 05, 2022

In this episode...

The Sofeast Group's reliability expert, Andrew Amirnovin, joins Adrian once again to discuss what the product return rate is and how to reduce yours.

He provides a checklist of activities you can take during development to avoid issues that result in returns, and, should the worst happen and you start receiving returns on products that have been sold already, he also gives you a series of activities to follow to triage and fix the problems.

Don't miss it, this information could save you a LOT of effort, money, and damage to your reputation!

 

Show Sections

00:00 - Greetings, introducing the topic.

01:17 - Andrew introduces his role as new product development head in the Sofeast group.

02:58 - What is the product return rate?

05:07 - How return rates vary depending on product type.

06:45 - What are the 5 main causes of product returns?

10:37 - 7 Steps you can take to ensure you get as low a return rate as possible BEFORE the product is sold.

25:51 - If a product you’re already selling starts getting returned, what can you do? (6 steps)

33:00 - Some famous product recalls.

36:10 - The role of the NPI process.

38:27 - Wrap up.

 

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