Adrian and Renaud tackle the big question of cost versus quality and how they both affect each other in manufacturing. You'll learn common Chinese attitudes towards them, the long-term power of lean, and some achievable levers that can bring you cost and quality benefits that most businesses can implement quickly.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introduction (inc. our team at CES '24!) 01:50 - What do we mean by Cost V Quality? 04:49 - A typical Chinese manufacturer's logic about...

In this episode... Adrian and Andrew Amirnovin kick off 2024 by going through 7 key New Product Introduction tasks you need to be aware of to get a positive outcome before mass producing your product. If this is the year you bring a product to market, get ahead of the curve by bearing these 7 things in mind from one of our most experienced team members who is also Head of Compliance and Reliability.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 03:01 - 1. Document your...

Adrian and Renaud return for the last podcast of 2023, a bumper episode where they go through 13 quality strategies you can adopt to achieve consistent product quality. They're roughly split into pre-production and post-production strategies, so settle down and dive in here!   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introduction. Pre-production 02:18 - 1. Due diligence and factory audits to ensure the supplier has the capabilities to reach your quality standards. 04:31 - 2. Define a quality...

Adrian hosts and Paul Adams, one of Sofeast's senior engineers joins him to talk about how to add surface textures to plastic injection mold tooling and get the finish that we want on our plastic molded parts.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introduction to textures for plastic injection molded parts. 02:55 - General points about getting started adding textures. 07:59 - Draft Angle rules of thumb for mold design with textures in mind. 14:58 - 5 Common methods used to add surface...

Adrian and Renaud chat about whether hiring a sourcing agent is necessary for businesses that want to purchase products from China. They also discuss the different options, such as doing the sourcing work yourself, and their pros and cons.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and news: CNY '24 prep and visa-free China entry for 6 countries. 08:06 - Who typically uses a sourcing agent to buy from China and what types are there? 13:10 - 4 sourcing approaches the buyer can take. 14:02 - When does...

Adrian hosts and Renaud is onboard to offer some cautionary advice about working with 'the cheapest Chinese supplier' with a focus on relatively ordinary consumer and electronic products. What might sound like a good deal could actually land you in hot water. Here's why...   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introduction: Should we be wary of choosing the cheapest supplier? 05:35 - Warning signs from cheap suppliers. 09:54 - Do lowest prices = a stable relationship for the mid to...

In this episode... Renaud hosts this episode on the EU's forthcoming directive on product liability which should get you nervous if you sell into Europe. Clive Greenwood and Prof. Simon Choi are two highly experienced compliance experts and Professor Choi brings a fresh outlook on how this affects manufacturers in China and EU importers in legal terms.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 04:23 - What is the intent of the directive? 06:53 - What does this directive...

In this episode... Renaud and Andrew, Sofeast's head of New Product Development, are in the booth discussing how a supplier's quality can be evaluated and validated. In order to avoid purchasing parts or materials that will let you down, you need to be able to assess if a supplier is capable of reaching your requirements, and they're going to tell you how!   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 01:31 - Why is supplier quality important? 05:56 - When should you start...

In this episode... Adrian hosts and welcomes Kate Oliynykova, Sofeast's head of supply chain management, onto the podcast once again. This time she sheds light on how we do supplier identification for customers, sharing 7 tips for key areas to focus on and lots of advice that can help you get better results when you're sourcing from China (or other countries in Asia, too, actually).   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 04:12 - 1) How to find a good supplier in...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud welcomes China business expert Angel Ho, CEO of Hongda Business Services in Shenzhen, onto the show to talk about what the business environment for foreigners seeking to do business there today is really like, and about the process of setting up a manufacturing facility in China for foreigners and all of the legal and administrative points you'll need to take care of. They also both share some of the key mistakes that foreign businesses make when setting up their...

In this episode... Adrian and Andrew Amirnovin, Sofeast's reliability expert and our head of New Product Development, return and explore component selection (especially for electronics). This is just one piece of the manufacturing puzzle, but if you get it wrong it will come back to bite you! Luckily, Andrew is here to walk you through 18 steps that will help you choose components that fit the bill.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 01:17 - What is the component...

In this episode... Renaud hosts and is joined by Sofeast's senior engineer Paul Adams to go through Technology Readiness Levels which is a product development framework that is often used to gauge the progress of a new product launch project, especially during prototyping. But is it useful for today's manufacturers who are mass producing, say, consumer electronics? Find out here...   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 01:08 - Where did the TRL originate? 04:37 -...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud flies solo in this episode and discusses what he thought of the recent Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson. What can we, the manufacturing community, learn from this enigmatic character? As you'll hear, one of his specialities is making positive DFM (Design for Manufacturing) changes, so there will be plenty of focus on those, but also on his 5-point algorithm for success, triumphs and failures in manufacturing, and more.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and...

In this episode... Adrian and Andrew Amirnovin, Sofeast's reliability expert and our head of New Product Development, are back on the pod and taking you on a journey into what testing to failure is, its benefits, and why you will find it a useful tool in your product reliability testing arsenal.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 01:28 - What is test to failure? 05:33 - Why does testing to failure matter to companies who are bringing a new product to market (5...

Sofeast's CEO Renaud explains what a manufacturing organizational chart is and, critically, 7 key things that we can learn about our suppliers from theirs. During your sourcing journey, Renaud's advice will help you spot potential issues with some red flags to be aware of. (Adrian from the team hosts).   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introduction. 02:03 - What is an organizational chart? 06:39 - 1. No Quality Dept. 10:26 - 2. Placing the quality department under the production...

In this episode... Renaud hosts today and is joined by Andrew Amirnovin, Sofeast's reliability expert and our head of New Product Development, to cover the topic of reliability data and how it can be used to help you make better products and reduce your costs.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 00:43 - What kind of reliability data can we get? 04:43 - Keeping a database of past issues or 'lessons learnt.' 10:29 - Where do issues that occur during manufacturing...

Renaud makes it clear where you need to be with new product designs before you approach Chinese manufacturers. He also explains the risks with immature designs, common red flags, and the work you'll need to do to have designs that can be called 'ready to industrialize.'   Show Sections 00:00 - Introduction. 01:24 - What do we mean by mature product designs? 04:54 - Don't ignore important phases and milestones in the NPI process. 07:30 - What the average Chinese manufacturer will need from you...

Renaud welcomes e-commerce guru and host of the popular 'The Seller Process' podcast, Gianmarco Meli, to the podcast today to talk about building better systems and processes for your company if you're importing and selling products that you make or buy in low-cost Asia online via e-commerce and want to be more successful.   Show Sections 00:00 - Introducing today's topic and Gianmarco. 04:19 - When starting up with e-commerce, what to work on (and optimize/systematize) first? 15:52 - Tips...

Renaud and Adrian talk about what a feasibility study for new products is, its benefits, and everything you need to know in order to implement yours. This will really help you to identify potential issues long before you manufacture your product, saving time and money on correcting them later on.   Show Sections 00:00 - Introduction. 02:01 - Many people don't consider doing a feasibility study. 03:11 - The 6 phases of the NPI process for an electro-mechanical product. 15:12 - The role of...

In this episode... Join Andrew Amirnovin, Sofeast's reliability expert and our head of New Product Development, on a deep dive into what component-level testing is, the process followed for selecting and testing components that won't let you down, and the various benefits you'll get by doing this during the product design and development process.   Show Sections 00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic. 01:21 - What is the difference between component-level and product-level...

Renaud and our senior engineer Paul Adams discuss the Taguchi method, also known as Robust Design. The Taguchi method is a tool used in engineering and manufacturing to improve product and process quality and reduce defects at an early stage. It is a statistical analysis approach used early in the product development process that reduces your costs and improves product quality and reliability, so is a popular way to develop products that are less risky to manufacture.   Show Sections 00:00 -...

In this episode... China-based British compliance expert, Clive Greenwood, joins  Renaud this time to discuss the risks that cheap Li-ion batteries from China flooding the globe pose to consumers. They go on to discuss in detail the health and safety and compliance laws governing batteries (and most products), and forthcoming sustainability laws that will be in place from next year that will affect all importers. It doesn't matter if you're in the EU, USA, or elsewhere; you're running out of...

In this episode... Sofeast's CEO Renaud and Andrew Amirnovin, reliability expert and our head of New Product Development, explore two high-profile product reliability nightmares that have been in the news recently: the destruction of the Oceangate Titan submersible that catastrophically imploded near the wreck of the Titanic and the reliability failures of the Siemens Gamesa wind turbines that suffered from vibration landing them with a $ 2 billion price tag to fix and denting their stock...

Sofeast CEO Renaud welcomes our friend Fredrik Grönkvist of Compliancegate.com to the show today to talk about EU product compliance, in particular, harmful substances of note, common regulations or directives you need to comply with, and what we can learn from recent data about non-compliant products found by EU market surveillance authorities. They also provide some great advice about how to ringfence compliance from your suppliers during the procurement stage of your project which is...

Renaud and Adrian tackle the issue of whether partnering with your Chinese factory is a misguided intention. The Western win-win mindset doesn't mean as much in China, and buyers may find that neglecting basic protections such as a manufacturing contract in the name of not upsetting their supplier and having a 'strong partnership' is a big mistake. Here's why...   Show Sections 00:00 - Introduction. 01:22 - Why some buyers are attracted to 'partnering up' and what it really means. 05:18 -...