slide 1: We all know that hiring a company to do pre-shipment inspects costs a
lot of money. So it’s natural to think that you can come out ahead by
choosing a factory that always does good work and ships quality
products. That way you can avoid the cost of working with a third-
party inspector. It’s important to note however that by not hiring that
third-party inspection service providing company you are taking a big
risk.
If you are thinking about whether to invest in pre-shipment inspections it’s
helpful to consider a concept called the cost of poor quality or COPQ.
So What Is the Cost of Poor Quality COPQ
The cost of poor quality refers to the costs associated with providing poor quality
products or services. According to the American Society for Quality COPQ consists of
four parts:
1. Internal Failure Costs: Costs associated with defects before the customer
receives your product. For example if a product gets made incorrectly and it needs to
be scrapped or reworked costs would be incurred.
2. External Failure Costs: Costs associated with defects after the customer
receives your product. For example if a customer found a scratch across the front of
the picture frame you sold them you could incur costs replacing the item or dealing
with customer complaints.
3. Appraisal Costs: Costs to determine the degree of conformance to quality
standards. Pre-shipment inspection costs fall into this category.
4. Prevention Costs: Costs to minimize numbers 1 through 3. For example paying
for the time involved in developing quality standards implementing quality systems
or doing quality planning all incur costs.
slide 2: What Does COPQ Have To Do With Pre-Shipment Inspections
Pre-shipment inspections incur appraisal costs. At the same time they
help you to limit failure costs. Let’s talk about why is that.
How Do Pre-Shipment Inspections Prevent Failure Costs
As you can see above there are two types of failure costs internal and
external.
Let’s talk about internal failure first
Let’s choose the company making fire pits for this. Before they worked for
pre-shipment inspection they had an episode where the fire pit cartons
were not being stapled correctly at the factory. Because of this when they
received the cartons they were falling apart and products were getting
damaged. The company had to bring in terms of people in the United
States to rework these units. This incurred tens of thousands of dollars’
worth of internal failure cost. If they had done a pre-shipment inspection
they could have avoided this. They would have incurred appraisal costs
but the amount would be minimal.
Let’s Talk About External Failure
Let’s say the company is making plastic cups
You specify that the cups are supposed to be blue. On the packaging it says
they’re blue but when customers open up the boxes they find the cups are
actually red. Now you need to replace all the red cups and you incur
external failure costs dealing with customers and getting replacement cups
to make them happy. Incurring the appraisal cost of an inspection would
have helped you avoid spending this money and having dissatisfied
customers.
slide 3: It’s easy to look at the cost of pre-shipment inspection and view it only
as an expense imagining that you’ll save money by not paying for it. You
might have confidence in your factory and you might be betting on their
ability to get things right. But when it comes down it you could be
leaving yourself open to unforeseen failure costs.
What Benefits the Pre-Shipment Inspection Bring to You
• Reduction of import risks
• Improvement of your sourcing efficiency
• No need for you to be on-the-spot save your time and money
Want to perform pre-shipment inspection before Get in touch with
China Inspection Service
Contact US
China Inspection Service Limited
Address: Room 4-1-3602 Heng Da Hu Fu
Guan Cheng District Dong Guan
Guan Dong – 523007 China
Tel: +86 138 2875 6517
Email: infochina-inspection-service.com
Website: www.chinainspectionservice.com