Quality Fade

[unixronin]

Or, "Don't buy ANYTHING manufactured in China."

That part you're outsourcing the manufacture of?  It's perfectly safe, because they're making it to your design and specifications, right?  Well, they were when they started.  Does it still meet your specs now?

Some quality issues are not all that serious, but others are downright frightening.  One of the most disturbing examples I have encountered while working in China involved the manufacture and importation of aluminum systems used to construct high-rise commercial buildings.  These are the systems that support tons of concrete as it is being poured, and their general stability is critical.

The American company that designed and patented the system engineered all key components.  It knew exactly how much each part was supposed to weigh, and yet the level of engineering sophistication did not stop the supplier from making a unilateral decision to reduce the specifications.  When the "production error" was caught, one aluminum part was found to be weighing less than 90% of its intended weight.

That small appliance.  It carries UL, CSA and TUV product-safety ratings.  But is what they're manufacturing now the same internally as what UL and TUV tested?  Maybe not:

Third-party testing is far from fail-safe. Consider one study conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2001. In a review of nearly 200 recalled electrical products from China, the CPSC found that more than 25% had had prior approval by an international third-party testing agency such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL), Intertek Testing Services (ETL) or the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).

The final paragraph of the article contains the telling phrase:  "Race to the bottom."  The quest for cheaper and cheaper suppliers to reduce costs and increase short-term profits conveniently ignores the old adage that you get what you pay for — if you're lucky.  If you're only willing to pay your suppliers for sows' ears, don't expect to get silk purses.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

There's a reason earthquakes are such horrorshows in China.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

ihnjh,ijls "Bulgarian pancake special"...

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

a friend of mine basically has the plan "made in china"? not with my money. he will still buy Apple of course, but damn near everything else has to be free range, organic, domestic or as least trade-friendly... american made clothes and goods as best he can manage.

now if EVERYBODY did that ;)

especially with software... cuz well, sometimes that outsourcing gets you what you deserve too - code that would've been done faster, better, cheaper, better, bug free, and eventually in the long run, under budget ;)

oiy. when will they learn? how many human lives will be lost until then?

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[pernishus.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess what I'll remark here is that exactly the same practices are pursued by suppliers here in the US -- and that the motto has been "Caveat emptor" from at least Roman times... I viewed the business practices of a major US department store with respect to its suppliers in the 1960s in detail from both sides of the supplier/suppli-ee fence -- and the shady/shoddy went both ways, I can assure you.

I do find that the US is awfully quick to criticize other countries, and awfully slow to clean up its own act... a glance at the continuing problems in the wake of the hurricanes should suffice.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Very true, but I think there's a little more recourse against US vendors and suppliers. They at least nominally have to comply with US law and aren't allowed to, for instance, cut foods and medicinal products with poison. (Or, as has happened at least once, outright substitute poisonous chemicals for medicinal compounds because the propylene glycol was cheaper than glycerin and looked just the same. Though to be fair to China, heads literally rolled over that one.)

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Agreed. While I am certainly no fan of the courts system, the fact remains that it's still useful. Knowing that a lawsuit is at best a mutually assured destruction scenario, it gives people an incentive to not give the other guy a reason to hit the Big Red Switch.

The United States courts system is horribly broken: yet, due to the particular way in which it is broken, it is still marginally useful.

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Not to mention concerns that Chinese companies are running off with proprietary information, it's not like you can sue them if they start producing your product and selling it under their name - or even selling it with your packaging but keeping what should have been your profits, and substituting their own cheaper components. Fake Cisco switches, anyone?

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

Yeah... on a more trivial level I was stupid enough to get burned on a pair of 8GB[sic] Samsung[sic] Flash Drives a few months ago. They're 2.5GB with a Windows-spoof that makes them appear to the OS to be 8GB.

Silly me...

The degree to which the Chinese have mastered the art of near-flawless print,engraving/embossing and packaging forgery is frightening. The shit always looks dead perfect, cosmetically. It's really gotten to the point that, aside fro using trusted US-side sellers, I have no idea anymore what is and is not authentic.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And that, in some ways, is one of the more frightening aspects: The "perfect forgeries" that are indistinguishable right up until the moment when you find that, in some major and important way, they don't work.

With a counterfeit Samsung 2.5GB flash drive that lies to the OS to appear to be an 8GB flash drive, this is merely annoying. With, say, a counterfeit Kidde smoke-and-CO detector that doesn't actually detect CO (to pull one hypothetical example out of my ass), it could be lethal.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

Exactly...

Here's an applicable example I can imagine:

I'd never try to explore a mine shaft in the mountains here using a multi-gas/O2 sensor made in freaking China.

EVER

[databeast.livejournal.com]

actually, amusingly enough, the opening of direct-purchase electronics (by the individual consumer) from China thanks to the internet has had me picking up a little handful of stuff directly from China lately. (of course, that's probably the /only/ kind of thing I'd do this way).

Case in point, this week I recieved my 4GB black USB wriststrap. unit cost, $8, shipping cost, $5. (Same thing the US, around $20 and $6 shipping). Granted, it took 2 weeks to arrive. There's also these OLED video-watches that have just started showing up over there, kinda want one but really unsure as to the quality of them however, and the only US 'distributor' is ThinkGeek. (who are nothing more than a reseller, and hardly a partner distributor at all) so I'm a bit leery of those at the mo.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I still don't like that saying. I think it is much more accurate to say "You get no more than what you paid for (and often less)"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, I know the traditional form of it was "You get what you pay for." As qualified forms, I think both are pretty much equivalent, though that form may get the point across a little better.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

NASA has a term for this: "normalization of deviance." It originated from the Feynman report on the Challenger disaster, where he noted that substantial deviations from specification were noticed and accepted on the grounds of, "well, it didn't cause problems the last time we flew."

It starts off simple. "Well, let's undercut by two percent and see if our buyer notices. He didn't? Okay, then two percent below spec is still good for his purposes. Now let's try three, and then four..."

By the time the buyer discovers he's been fleeced, he's out huge amounts to undo all the construction. The vendor declares an immediate bankruptcy and the fat cats cash out.

I imagine there's soon going to be a "inspections tax" in goods from China, in the form of all the additional QA inspections that has to be done to ensure conformance to spec. I would also be in favor of federal law saying that if you buy from Chinese vendors, you may be sued by injured parties for failures connected to your product which occur as a result of substandard parts.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

Recent accusations of unreliability in Chinese products are now being met with tit-for-tat claims that U.S. products are faulty.

Hey, maybe we could send over a free sample of our "inferior" ICBM product and see what they think. Everyone loves a demo, and kids are just crazy for fireworks, aren't they?

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Heh, makes me think of the Made In China rototiller that failed after a short time. When we took it apart, we found that some of the key internal parts were made out of nylon or some related plastic. On a rototiller. Of course, the minute it hit a certain resistance, bam, it failed. And of course, there was no warrenty on this thing. You'd be nuts to offer a warrenty on something made in China.

The one good thing I could see coming out of the meltdown of the global economy would be dropping a lot of the trade with China.