Electronic Manufacturing in China

What are potential issue during electronic manufacturing in China

Once the procurement of raw materials and sub-part is operated, they need to be processed to give birth to the final assembled product, firmware need to be uploaded, the product test and finally it will be packed. Therefore there is still a long way before the final product to be ready to shipped.

Supplier who transform raw materials into parts are called processor or simply transformer. They are mostly either plastic injection company, die casting company, or they may also be some CNC contractor.

From electronics component and blank manufactured PCB, there is also PCBA manufacturing to process most of time using SMT and DIP production line, after what firmware has to be loaded into the chipset and final product has to be assembled.

There are several key point which are addressed during this manufacturing steps:

 

Controling the quality during electronic manufacturing in China

When talking about mass production, quality is a crucial Key Performance Indicator because it indirectly lead to no quality cost. Everything is related about how to minimize defective rate over a production and to avoid recall (which is the nightmare of every distributor or retailer).

How to control efficiently the quality when manufacturer are not organized and structure to do so ? You probably thinking they would manage everything well by themselves... and then you would probably have some surprise about the result. You plan to teach them, but you would discover 6 month later that high turnover have wasted your time since the people are not the same anymore and the instructions and information were not passed to the new team..

You plan to operate a final quality control ? You are right since this is necessary, but is it enough ? You would be amazed the number of company who do some Pre-Shipment Inspection on their production and finally have to face a high defective rate and some claim from customer 6 month after their products to be on the market.

Many buyer don't have experience in manufacturing process and got some product with quality fluctuating simply because quality procedure are not respected during manufacturing and they are not able to identify those issue earlier enough.

If local supplier may claim a defective rate around 1-2% on the paper it is not rare to get a two figures defective rate in the end. If you want to control your supplier know really its defective rate, simply ask them to see their inspection record which allow them to estimate those figures (remind: if you can not measure, you can not control). Rarely, local manufacturers hold a defect recording to be able to estimate the defective rate of their own production.

Transformer are partly paid for the time they allocate to transform raw materials into parts. For plastic injection a high number of parameters are considered (injection speed is one of them) and those parameters influence the cost of the transformation process. Those parameters are fixed to fit the requirement of the parts and not respecting them may involved to get the parts to fail after few months of use.

When a  transformer wants to optimize its cost, he will simply change the parameters of its machine without you may notify it. At the beginning the part looks the same but on a long time of use the living reaction may become improper. Of course if you inject low end product, this is not a big issue, but if you are servicing military or nuclear industry probably the lasting life of a part become critical.

For this reason controlling fully the manufacturing process at every steps is essential.

If you need you product to be certified for rohs, you want to make sure the manufacturing is taking place according to this critteria. A supplier who mix his Rohs and No Rohs production line can give as a result some lead dust affecting your product to pass the test...

 

Producing your electronic product on time

If you are involved in the distribution of your product, you certainly know how important is the delivery time criteria to serve your demanding customers at the moment when they require to buy.

There are mostly three parameters which can affect delivery time:

- production capacity is not enough big  to produce on time and you are a too small customer face to other big one to avoid being neglected by your supplier, so you don't have priority on the line and you get delivered late

- procurement is not on time and the production can not start on time either

- quality issue is appearing during production and delay the delivery

 

Managing Copy and Intellectual Property Protection for Electronic Manufacturing in China

When you manufacture your product you will get someone in the manufacturing chain who in the end get access to the full product and full concept related to your new idea, this is usually the final assembler, in charge of assembly all the parts, and to pack the product. If you don't control the supply chain, some information may go to sub-contractors you will never know the existence and those sub-contractor never signed a NDA with you...

Local manufacturer make product which they sell on their own distribution channel, they potentially have other customers who are your competitors and would probably be interested in buying your products directly at the manufacturing place. How do you ensure your IP and good idea which will allow you to stay ahead the competition will not benefit other.

 

Organizing Electronic Manufacturing in China

Most of time, when there is an issue on a production, it comes from organization. We found out that quite a lot of local manufacturer get difficulties to organize themselves properly, to optimize productivity and to anticipate issue.

- control of supply chain => tracability / copy / information given to third parties

- strategic packaging => hide packaging

- protect firmware => injection at the last moment

- protect product => final product unseen

 - injection faster and not respected => save money

- defective rate to keep low

- coordination of vendor and control of sub-parts

 

How we handle electronic manufacturing in China

During the mass production PAG Electronics play the role of production monitoring, production assistance and quality control.  We have two possible way to do so:

1./ All the production is handle by local manufacturer

In this case we are in charge of controlling the quality at different step : for raw materials, parts, finished products, packaging. We are also in charge to make sure the production is running smoothly and on time. We operate a regular and organized follow up with each stake holder and handle all their issue without polluting your time.

 

2./ We handle the final assembly

We are not a factory, we don't own some big machine, SMT line, mould workshop, and 300 workers but we have an assembly area which allow 90% of project we manage to operate an efficient operational intellectual property protection by performing 100% inspection, firmware loading, final assembly and packaging out of local manufacturers eyes and under our own roof.

Not only it ensure 100% quality of your product since 100% of them pass in our hand one by one, but it also allows to protect the intellectual property of your product, packaging design, and potentially final customer identity. So your product is not served to someone else, and don't come to cannibalize your market, hence giving you more time to sell your products at decent price and keeping margin up.

In both case scenario, prior manufacturing, we will establish necessary technical and organizational document allowing to make sure the mass production is properly structured and that even some team member of the manufacturing are leaving, the same procedure is implemented for next order.

During the manufacturing phase our project team work directly with each stakeholder of the supply chain (components supplier, processor, transformer, packaging manufacturer, assembler, logistic company)  to ensure mass production is occurring without any issue (actually there are always some but we are here to solve and fix them in a way that you will not even feel them).

Our project engineer will closely monitor the schedule in order to ensure the production is on time.

We will allocate our quality control staff to inspect components, materials, parts and finished product during the manufacturing phase, so that we can control the quality.

Our electronic hardware engineering  team will play the role of FAE (Field Application Engineer) to support PCBA manufacturers directly at their location in order to help them to debug hardware issue before involving the next step of the manufacturing.

Our mechanical engineering team will support processors and transformers to make sure plastic parts are injected following the conditions requirement, and that metal parts are machined properly and according to the requirements.

Our merchandiser will be in charge of setting and holding an accurate accounting and inventory of the parts during and after the end of the production.

 

How you benefit our electronic manufacturing in China

You will benefit a full team dedicated to your project and handling all manufacturing phase, controlling the supply chain and the quality while making sure your delivery is on time.

Our company address

1

PAG Electronics - Shenzhen  

Shahe industry area, Baishizhou, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, 518053, China
2

PAG Electronics - Shanghai

Room 1019, No.100 Nanshan Road, Shanghai, China