New Buyers Seminar in Hong Kong

It’s that time of year again—The semi-annual Global Sources Tradeshows.  This week is electronics and swimwear and lingerie.  It don’t quite understand the category groupings, but great for the techies that don’t mind taking a break from gadgets for the fashion show.Silk Road is presenting at the New Buyers Seminar all this week and next at the Hong Kong Shows.  I'll post updates and information from my presentation and from others' as the shows progress.The theme of the talks this session seem to be “Trust but verify.”  I figure if it’s good enough for the US/ Japan/South Korea in negotiating with North Korea, it’s good for working here too.  Like the shows in Shanghai and Hong Kong last year, there are more than a hundred attendees per day at the seminars so far.  Excellent information too, if I do say so my own humble self.  The jokes and slides were the same too.Attending the show there are usually two kinds of buyers, one is the Purchasing Agent who may not be well versed in the production process.  The other is the manufacturing expert.  This second buyer know what the product both needs to do and look like and also may be the designer and original engineer too.  In either case, remember that buyers have a significant amount of info to include into the process but may not be as familiar with specifics of how things are done here—even similar engineering process maybe different here.  Regardless of which buyer you may be, it’s your money and your product and you can be involved as much (or as little) as you want.One of the presenters, Michael Hetzel, from Pro QC International  has some great advice for getting the most out of you QC.  Their website is here, some highlights are here:First, remember that “quality drift” can be due to fixed prices.  So if you demand on fixing prices over a long period of time (even a month) the change in exchange rate has to come from somewhere and if the factory can’t raise the price they are going to cut the quality.Second, language is a major reason for problems.  Translations are often inexact.  In addition Chinese is a high context language English and other Western European languages are low context languages.  Professional/industrial interpreters are worth the cost.Third, buyers need to be thinking about managing the entire supply chain and not just doing spot-check QC.  Remember, quality is tied to timing, costs and logistics; literally EVERY step of the process.Fourth, certifications like ISO, SA8000, etc. are a good starting point, but does the supplier just have the certificates or do they really manage the processes.  Also, these business process certifications are not QC processes.  Don’t confuse paperwork with quality control.  I would add that these certifications (at least a paper certificate) can be bought.Fifth, if you have your own QC staff you need to be aware of “assimilation of QA into local processes and factory cultures.”  One of the way’s around this is to use multiple QC; your own and one or two 3PQC firms.Finally, there are inspectors and there are engineers and you know that they are different.  Inspectors may not necessarily be engineers.  They can count boxes, test for some quality issues and confirm qtty’s and loading.  And sometime this is exactly what you need.  Engineers are more technically trained and can both report problems as well as test for technical issues and help resolve technical issues.I would add another word on semantics here.  Within “testing” companies the difference between “testing” and “evaluating” your product may be clear to everyone but you.  Just because you pay for a “test” to be done on a product does not mean that that product is ever actually tested.  Most “testing” is actually “evaluating” which is a nice word for simply matching info from factories with published standards.  So if you’re not getting actual “testing” done of what value is the “evaluation?”  Not much, I don’t think.  An evaluation doesn’t confirm what’s in a product, it only confirms that factories know what standard they are supposed to be meeting.  Scary.Another presenter, Charles Kirmuss, of Infinity Gear and Technology, had some great advice on protecting you IP.1.    Execute the legal work in China.  If you do not, you’ll be waiting until the factory rep comes to visit your (foreign) location.2.    Put the technical and logistical information in escrow with a 3rd party to protect against companies going out of business.3.    Use a “black box” operations to separate pieces of sensitive products to keep the final product unknown to questionable suppliers.  One operation of this type is Passage Maker, who's own Mike Bellamy also presented at the show.More information from all of the presenters, including me, can be found at Global Sources' Smart China Sourcing website.