Rough Guide to Outsourcing In China

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.

Comments

And this is surprising?

[Jhon]

From the article's author:

In CM's defense, this is the most complex PCA they have manufactured to date. It pushes the limits of their capabilities. The main PCA contains three BGAs and several high pin density surface mount devices. The bulk of CM's output is fairly simple mice and game controllers. CM top management wants to work with WiLife because it forces their factory to enhance their capabilities.

The author himself says they went with a firm that had never worked on anything more complicated than mice or game controllers. Of course they were going to encounter problems. And it looks like they were OK with that with the deal they were getting...

China

[TheRecklessWanderer]

We test stuff from China. Most of it we don't buy because the quality isn't there. It isn't that much cheaper than the stuff that comes from Taiwan. The Korean stuff isn't bad, better than China, but is hit and miss sometimes. Doing business with China is hard because you really can't return stuff to them. Some of the more advanced companies have "depots" in Hong Kong, but not many yet. Look at Japan 30 years ago, or Taiwan/Korea 10 to 15 years ago, and they were in the same state that China is in now. Today, Japanese product comes at a premium, and is superior to most product (IMHO) that is manufactured here in North America (vehicles immediately spring to mind). Once the Chinese people get their head around the different methodology of doing business in North America, they will come in full force and North America will have some serious issues to deal with.