Made in China

I have some experience with sourcing electrical products from China, and offer the following comments :

If you are installing the equipment that you are ordering in New Zealand, then it will, of course, have to comply with the various NZ standards that are pertinent.

You cannot expect your Chinese manufacturer to know anything about NZ standards, it will mostly be up to you to specify what it is that you want in sufficient detail, and to make sure that your specification is understood.

You should do the electrical drawings in NZ, these must surely be an essential part of the specification for what you want built.

While a visit to your manufacturer's factory is not essential, it certainly helps to get the trading relationship off to a good start. You will be able to see who you are dealing with, and how they operate, as will they. Highly recommended.

Good communication is essential, but is often frustrated because the engineers that you need to understand your requirements are not necessarily fluent in english, and the fluent english speakers are not technically fluent. It can take great patience and persistence to get your message understood.

Hope this helps.

Mark aka Paulus

What you say is not a true statement. I have supplied equipment and machinery all over the world. It has always been noted that one must meet the country of imports requirements. That goes without saying.

Now the other issue here is, as a supplier of machine tooling or automated equipment. Who stood behind the materials we sold. We made it our business to know what the customer not only required but what the legalities consisted of.

P.S. That's why U.S. made materials cost so much. You get what you pay for!

Hi Paul and all contributors to this discussion, I knew before even posting this question that the answers would not be easy, I believe that the biggest problem with this is the language. The reason that I say this is that we can design and build control systems that meet the specific requirements of most countries by asking a few simple questions, other factors can also come into effect such as Loyd's Standards.

Thank You for your comments, I will have to request the electrical drawings from the company and then edit them to a standard that is acceptable in New Zealand.

It is also possible that I do a field trip to inspect the equipment before it is shipped to New Zealand.

Again Thanks for all your good answers.

Very Best Regards

Joe

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your input mate, I have had problems in the past with imported equipment from China. I was just wondering if anyone had a sure fast way of addressing the problem that is why I have asked the best from CR4

Best Regards

Joe

The company that I worked for for the past 8 1/2 years is an NZ-wide distributor of electrical switchgear and enclosures. Most of the product lines are imported, either from Europe or China.

About 5 years ago, we started a project to develop and sell our own brand of socket outlets, light switches and related accessories. As you can probably appreciate, this is a very tough, competitive market so quality was very high on the list of important considerations. Adherence to standards was essential, as was being able to prove this with adequate test certification.

An engineer with a lengthy history of designing these types of product was hired, and he did all of the drawings and specifications for the products, some of which had to be specified in excruciating detail to be certain of the right result.

Our manufacturing partner in China was carefully chosen, based on prior experiences with them and their reputation for turning out a good product. Our engineer did two factory visits during the development and testing phases. All of the testing for standards compliance was done here in NZ, using samples provided by the China factory. As I recall, there was a fair amount of email exchanged to get everything right so that it would pass the testing.

Our engineer speaks only English, and was occasionally heard to remark that fluency in Chinese would have made communication easier at times. Nevertheless with persistence a good mutual understanding was reached on the important issues.

The first few orders of product were very good, no quality issues at all. Then, in one batch, we got some product where the plastic had been overcooked and was very brittle. We had to dump the lot. After many more emails were exchanged, and another factory visit, some changes to the manufacturing process were agreed to, and the faulty product was replaced at our manufacturer's expense. It seems that once they realised that any quality problems would land back in their lap, this reinforced the need to maintain quality standards in the factory, and we had very few further quality issues.

I was assigned the tasks of QC checking of incoming shipments, and of testing the products for long-term reliability. Endurance testing showed that we had very good products that would last far longer than would normallly be expected. Switches, for instance, lasted for the equivalent of better than 50 years of normal use without even a single failure despite extensive endurance testing.

Call this a success story.

We also designed and and arranged the manufacture of a cabinet lock with another Chinese manufacturer. This was done totally by internet communication, there were no factory visits for this. Tooling costs were shared, and the manufacturer took our drawings and specification and produced samples which were spot-on, just what we wanted and of acceptable quality. Price, of course, was very attractive. The third order of these locks arrived, and it was found that over half had various cosmetic defects - casting flash not removed, paint applied without first removing the mould-release compound (so the paint flaked off easily), logo not straight. Manufacturer was happy enough to replace the product, but less happy to have to pick up the freight costs as well. Having got past this, the quality of all subsequent orders has been impeccable.

I guess the point that I am leading up to here is that the quality of the manufactured product is very largely dependent on the quality of your relationship with the manufacturer. If the mutual understanding of what is required is sufficiently complete, then you should receive pretty much what you wanted.

Expect the occasional quality problem, it does not matter which part of the world the manufacturing is done, they all make the odd blunder!

All the best,

Paulus

I'm not electrical, but I thought the standards were international. IEC regs? Is this wrong?

Codey

One of my sisters works for a major clothing retailer. All their stuff is made in China. My sisters number one job (headache) is to make sure they get what they ordered. You'd be amazed how over and over again the Chinese try to slip under their requirements. So to avoid this my sister has them reproduce a "sample". So she has it made here the correct way, then the Chinese have to essentially duplicate it before she'll place a large order. If they deviate from the original (happens all the frickin time) they have the original sample to fall back on. You wouldn't believe how often they cheapen the product and claim it's what was ordered.

Problems that we have had to overcome, are from having to completely rewire control systems (due to incorrect colour on the phase conductors), to installing safety relays to meet Cat 4. Also I have found that we have had to do new electrical drawings because the wiring of the electrical control does not match the electrical drawings.

I have also been having issues with American and German products (it isn't just China), even military-grade gear!

It really comes down to careful attention in putting together a clear and detailed specification of exactly what you want and quality checking when the gear comes in. Even then there is no guarantee.

it is because your using two different standards...the phase/wiring colors may not be true to your application since you are using australian standards but equipments coming from your country may also be incorrect with respect to china's standards...i think you may have to study china's standards since you may be frequently getting your equipment from china..and who knows all the trouble you have exerted in retrofitting may be eliminated...or simply, procure your equipments from countries of the same standards as you...

Thanks to all contributors, there is no easy answer.

We had a stock food plant imported from China a couple of years ago, and the motor control centre did not meet NZ Standards it had 75 motors of various sizes from 0.75 to 132kW the landed cost of the MCC and automation was around the $120000 NZ this was cheep. Since it did not meet the standard the company in China sent 2 electricians over for 6 weeks to re-build it to meet NZ Standards in our workshop at no extra labor cost, we just paid for the materials, this was a good outcome.

But with this project, I don't want to have to go down that road, I want it right before it is shipped, so I have advised the customer that we will draw up some specifications, as a guide for the Chinese company and then do a field trip to do Factory Acceptance Testing before the machinery is shipped to NZ.

Any alterations will then have to be photographed and approved back in NZ before they can ship the machinery.

Thanks for all the advise

Best Regards

Joe