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Rough Guide to Outsourcing In China

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the engineering-while-jetlagged dept.

zentec writes, "An article in Design News chronicles WiLife's outsourcing project to China (they make consumer surveillance cameras). It's a tale of a language barrier, misplaced EEPROMS, backyard engineering, incorrectly assembled parts, sloppy engineering, and flaring tempers. That, and an initial defect rate of nearly 80%." In the end WiLife seemed happy enough with their outsourced manufacturing. This is a nitty-gritty account of life under globalization.

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. What you see is not what you get by tttonyyy · · Score: 3, Informative

    I remember my first encounter with Chinese manufacturing.

    The factory had pictures of their product in their brochures. I was about to place a sample order when I noticed a picture of the product being made on their production line. It looked NOTHING like the one in their brochure. Closer inspection revealed that their product brochure consisted of products made by reputable manufacturers but with the brand names edited out (quite poorly). Shame on me for not spotting something so obvious before.

    Their actual products - a poor quality copy.

    Of course, that is my experience as a sample of one out of one. Hardly representative, I know, but kinda representative of TFA. :)

    --
    biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
  2. No mention of the "Third Shift" by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

    The third shift is slang for when the CM continues to manufacture more of your product without being asked about it. The goal, of course, is to shunt this product to a separate market and undercut your production (after all, they don't have marketing, R&D, etc to pay for). Since these CMs often handle inventory for you, they can order extra parts without you knowing.

    Or they take your design, modify it, and manufacture their own (possibly inferior) version. They have everything they need - board layouts (schematic can be derived), binary object code (for FPGAs, flash memory, etc), parts lists, etc.

    Just a hazard of outsourced production.

  3. Re:And this is surprising? by seanadams.com · · Score: 3, Informative

    And what exactly has the Professional Cricketers' Association and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to do with this ?

    PCA is industry lingo for Printed Circuit Assembly (with parts installed), as opposed to PCB, the bare board.