Quality Takes It On The Chin

Mind you, Mattel has acknowledged that most of the problems in its Chinese-made toys were due to design defects that the Chinese factories were not responsible for. Mattel has offered a formal apology to the Chinese over this.

Mattel was blackmailed into making that statement. It was nothing less than a show trial forced on them by the Chinese government. They were able to do this because Mattel is now so totally reliant on china as a manufacturing base that the threat of immediate cessation of all supply forced the boss of Mattel in front of the cameras for a ritual suicide to placate chinese anger at the west's discovery of their criminal activities.

Do you have sources, or is this just an assertion?

please, since when can LEAD PAINT be considered a "design defect".

Why would you even be defending them?

hmmm ...have something to gain? Like Mattel did by outsourcing American jobs to inferior countries so that we could get inferior and dangerous products and gleefully watch as our nations economy plummets?

Hum, revenge for those M16s. I had one. They are both greedy and deserve each other.

Brad

We in the US are getting far too reliant upon overseas manufacturing especially China, but as you say it's like preaching to an empty room. Received a mail order catalog for clothing in the mail this AM. At least 97% of the clothing, shoes and other goods (including weather forecasting equipment) was from overseas because it's cheap and retailers can mostly provide it direct-ship, make a profit and to H-ll with the public. I decided to stop buying anything not manufactured locally unless no one else can provide it. That's scary; maybe I'll have to become a nudist.

Unfortunately, it isn't really a case of

"...make a profit and to H-ll with the public..."

The public choses this business model every time they choose where to buy something based entirely on price. Wal-Mart didn't put the small local companies out of business because they're big and evil, they did it because the public chose to shop there to save a little bit of money. Thus things gravitate to the lowest possible cost suppliers. The retailers have no choice in the matter. They either compete on price, or die.

I'm a good seamstress...I'll make you whatever clothes you want.

as usual, the almighty dollar controls the world. Here is some food for thought. British Columbia has a huge apple producing area, The state of Washington has 10X the size. Ok now the scary part, China is planting the STATE OF WASHINGTON EVERY YEAR!!!!

The apples that used to be $40/40lb Box, making the farmer a bit of money to keep farming locally, are now Landing FOB Washington at 8$/40Lb - Since the farmers cannot compete with the Government of China's production methods, Ie peasent labor, free fuel and equipment, they are not growing apples anymore.

So you may ask, what do apples have to do with anything? Well, when a country stops producing it's own food, cannot supply it's people with energy, and other basic products of living, how long will it be before they cease to exist?

By the way, China has in excess of 35 Trillion US Dollars in Hard Form (liquid) to buy energy firms, Tech companies, and by the way Senators, Governors, Congressmen;

Oh ya and CONSUMERS!

We are doing this to ourselves in the ever winding road of endless CONSUMPTION.

MORE,MORE,MORE, how do ya like it, how do ya like it.

Guess wrote: Well, when a country stops producing it's own food, cannot supply it's people with energy, and other basic products of living, how long will it be before they cease to exist?

REPLY: one of the bad jokes after Pearl Harbor was the wounded complaining they were hit by a piece of scrapped Chevys. For a number of years prior to commencements of hostilities, Japan was buyimng up as much scrap metal from the US as as they could. Don't people ever learn?

Don't people ever learn? Guess not. And the politicians depend on it.

Learn what? Are you suggesting that no country sell anything to any other country? No international trade at all? That hardly seems to be the solution.

Trade is great, if the goods are produced fairly and to the same safe standard of the country that is importing them. IE Child or peasent labour, fuel rebates, use of harsh or even banned chemicals, or in the case of china all the above and gov't owned not for profit businesses. By the way Japan was charged and found guilty in world trade tribunal of flooding the market with below cost computer lcd screens. This caused huge damage to the us and canadian companies, many went broke. The japanese govt was spending huge amounts of $$$ on keeping their own companies afloat untill ours went broke, then the price of the lcd screens went thru the roof, and the companies made billions. The settlement was in the hundreds of thousands, and the companies over here are still gone, as well as our ability to keep up on R&D

MORE MORE MORE, How do ya like it? how do ya like it?

"Japan was charged and found guilty in world trade tribunal of flooding the market with below cost computer lcd screens."

Sources please? Its not that I don't believe you, but your post is based on this unsubtantiated statement. You should provide a reference.

Thanks,

Steve

No thats what tariffs and knobbiest were designed for not robbing us blind, The world banks control money by moving it and it is leaving the U.S. fast. Oh ya they out sourced our banking in the 30's.

Brad

Regarding Chinese quality. Chinese products typically are inferior. Period. When discussing matters of precision they just aren't there. My experience has shown that for ledger sheet savings, foreign,third world products cannot be beat.

My experience has shown that when safety quality, reliability and adherence to design specifications are considered that the US, Germany, British and EU companies excel.

This is not new. In fact it has been argued since outsourcing began. I only hope that something is actually DONE about it!

Global trade is here to stay for the moment. It is what we trade that bothers me. Skilled workers in the US should be employed by this countries companies.

over 20 years in quality.........cr3

Thank you for introducing me to Ron Paul. I did not believe such thinkers existed in polotics, let alone mentioning Ayan Rand. The problem is, a lot of people are being paid off by Big government in the form of entitlements. How can this impossible situation be overcome?

As far as China and others are concerned, Big governmnet is the major problem with outsourcing to third world countries, with its miriad regulations and taxes. Otherwise, this country could not be rivaled, economically or otherwise.

Just to let you know I'm a Canadian citizen that primarely left Canada because of the socialist situation there. I see us as not being far behind, if at all.

We bought an electronic assembly from China which performs an important function in our product.

When I went for FCC compliance, I supplied compliance testing certificates for each of the sub-assemblies and equipment to test. When the equipment failed due to the Chineese component, I contacted our vendor. First response was,"Why are you testing? Don't you trust us?"

They did a redesign, and it passed FCC.

The very next production lot had unauthorized changes that would have impacted the FCC compliance. I asked if they wanted to pay to have this new design qualified, they declined and changed the things that I complained about. Who knows what else they changed that I did not discover.

Every production lot performs slightly differently.

Quality was anotther problem. After a few failures, I had to sub-contract to have all the sub-assemblies disassembled, circuit boards cleaned and have the soldering inspected and touched up. Every now and then, a component lead was found with no solder.

The Chineese sub-assembly is being designed out.

I must admit that this is mostly opinion, but I have 2 problems with the degree of outsourcing the US is doing.

1. When the factory is in your back yard, it's easy to keep an eye on quality. When the factory is 12,000 miles away, you don't know you have a problem until a large number of defective parts have made and shipped, and you have to depend on the people that made the bad parts to fix the problem.

2. We are teaching the Chinese to build our products. They are already designing their own versions and marketing them. Forty years ago, we were the only country building large scale integrated circuits. We taught the Japanese to make them for us. Today, how many American factories are there?

I have no problem with the third world advancing, and think we should help them do so. Help, not hand our economy over to them and pay them to take it.

I have a hard time buying spare parts for my car because china made product could only last for one or two weeks so I resort to buying second hand parts which works and last longer than the new one.

This is also a problem on the commercial level, my employer transitioned from adding few parts made offshore, to assemble with domestic parts, & then package in house to import packaged goods directly. The former assembly process culled the inferior parts. Currently, the receiving inspectors cannot reasonably inspect without, "throwing money down the drain". Recently Operations instituted a full time rework department, Engineering cannot understand how this is cost effective.

Don't get me started on the Chinese made fasteners, bottom line, these manufacturers are inept, & neither myself or anyone in my family will ever ride in a Chery!!

My God, like minded people! I work in the textiles field, I actually test the items, usually military, before they hit the users. The company I work for has offices everywhere and I have to say that the people in the chinese offices are a little liberal with the truth. It is true that the economy is driven by price, but at one point it was driven by quality as well, I am in the UK and when we manufactured, we had a healthier economy that was almost self managed.

We have unfortunately gone down the same route as the US by outsourcing the manufacturing and thus we have ended up with a service based economy. This doesn't push the money around your own country, you are not paying for locally made products that pay people to also buy locally made products, ridiculous.

When people talk about the outsorcing, they always mention the lack of quality and the answer from china or india or wherever is always along the lines of please train us etc. There is no culture of quality in these countries, just as there is no culture of ethics! This is very similar to the situation in the UK at the start of the industrial revolution where business owners got fat off the sweat of their workers, but we and the rest of the civilised world(at the time) grew out of that and learned. Quality grew as did the respect for your workers, the emerging economies aren't doing that!

My suggestion is the old favourite of import levvies, the government makes money which could easily fund tax breaks for emerging businesses locally that supply the nation. The end result, a healthy economy where the other nation isn't able to hold your nation to ransom with 13 trillion dollars in currency!

It appears to me that we are not in control over the quality of products made in China. The Chinese are in control, not us. This needs to change direction for quality products to emerge from China. U.S. companies need to have large teams of QA inspectors stationed in the Chinese factories to insure things are being done per spec, with no deviations. One or two inspectors is not enough for the cunning, inscrutable Chinese.

Interesting watching the discusion, going mainly one way. Everybody seems suprised by the new invention of `supply and demand`hasn't this been going on since time began?

In the late 60's early 70's Japanese products were the pits, now they are the best, this is where China are today; but it wont take the Chinese 20 or 30 years, it will take them less than 10.

People will always go for the cheapest option, human nature, and this will drive the economy. Whether it will drive it in the direction you want is up to you.

In the 60's it was Japan, 70's korea, 80's some other third world country and so on. Today China tomorrow who knows where.

Maybe instead of bleating we should either help and stear them in right direction and get good product sooner rather than later. Or carry on moaning about inferior products.

As a `heads`up Africa has empty factories waiting to go into production they are empty at the moment because it is not profitable to run them, China is cheaper!

Quess where the next economic crisis will start?

Come on guys we are better than this, we are Engineers, we invented and run the world, we didn't invent moaning, winging and bitching there are plenty of other people to do that.

Lets do what we do best Create, Solve and help.