Everyone in the import/export business is aware of the necessity of quality control. If you are on the import side you need to have your products inspected before shipment to make sure they are in conformance to your standards. If you are on the export side you need to have internal QC check your goods to make sure they pass muster when the buyer sends his inspection team.
There are many kind of products imported from China, hard goods, textiles and electrical goods make up the three main categories. Electronics tends to be regarded as the most complicated of the three categories to inspect.
Unlike hard goods and textiles that mainly focus on workmanship checks, electronics focus even more on onsite testing. Many buyers consider the onsite test section of the inspection to be the most important part of an inspection. While many workmanship defects, scratches, dents, bad painting, cracks, crooked displays or other common defects are easy to spot; onsite testing catches defects that cannot be seen from simply looking at the product.
Critical Tests:
These tests include Hi-Pot, Earthing, Power Cord Strain Relief, Abnormal Use, Spark Check and a variety of other checks depending on the specific product being inspected. Performing these checks for every shipment is critical in order to insure the safe use of your products by the consumer.
Function Checks:
Unlike knives, cups, rulers, t-shirts or most other hard goods and textiles, electronic items tend to have a variety of different functions. In some cases one product can have tens or even hundreds of functions. That being the case performing basic function tests of these items is of high importance. We have found many cases when the products cannot be turned on, WiFi does not work, SD card reader is extremely slow, Blue Tooth or GPS are not functional or other basic problems that will greatly affect the sale or return rate of the product.
Electronic products should not be inspected using the same criteria as hard-goods, the biggest difference between the inspection methods would be the onsite testing section. The only way to be sure that you catch these important points during the inspections is to have clear working instructions for each product as well as very experienced inspectors who have backgrounds in electronics. These inspectors will be able to catch major points that normal visual inspections could not pick up.
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