Views: 201 Author: Wendy Publish Time: 2023-05-16 Origin: Site Inquire
Hiring the right third-party inspection agency for your company is critical. When deciding who to work with, you should consider a variety of factors, such as whether they are certified to provide inspections in China and have an ASQIQ license.
You should also verify whether they are experienced in your product category (e.g., furniture, textiles, electronics, building materials, etc.). And you should ask them if they can provide references, consider their coverage area, and inquire about whether trip expenses are included in the inspection cost.
Checklist for a Product Quality Inspection
The quickest way to conduct an unhelpful inspection is by not setting clear expectations beforehand. You should be incredibly detailed in laying out what you want the inspector to check for. Your inspection checklist should be well thought out and touch on packaging, labeling, visual inspection, functional testing, and more.
If a particular type of defect is not accounted for in your pre-shipment inspection checklist, the inspector will not necessarily look for it. So it is essential to work together with your inspection company to develop this list.
Inspector photographing products before shipping from China to the US
What happens if your inspector discovers excessive errors during the inspection and the lot fails? In that case, the manufacturer will need to rework your products. Once they do, you'll have to verify that they are now satisfactory by conducting another inspection. But who pays for it?
In your contract with the supplier, you should include a stipulation that if goods need to be reworked, the factory is responsible for re-inspection. This way, they have an added incentive to get it right the first time, and you don’t end up with additional costs to ensure they’re doing their job.
When your inspector goes to the factory in China, they will need to pull a random selection of products to check. But how do they choose these products? To do this, they use a method called AQL, or Acceptance Quality Limit.
This sampling method is vital because it determines two key things: how many units to inspect, and how many defective products are allowable before the goods fail inspection. Before conducting your inspection, it is essential that you understand this method and make the right selections. To learn more about this, you can read our article on AQL sampling or download our free guide to using it.
When your products are subject to a PSI, you'll receive an additional benefit: a comprehensive inspection report. Even if everything is up to your current quality standards, this report will contain insights about your current shipment and clues as to what may need improvement.
For example, your PSI may reveal some minor defects. Even if you accept a minorly defective shipment, you can take action to communicate the discrepancy to your manufacturer so they can fix the error or test different materials and/or processes in your next batch.
To see what the inspection report looks like, download our sample inspection report.
