Understanding Product Quality Inspection
One of the options we offer for quality control is a third party inspection service to come into the factory and inspect your shipment after it is complete. They will provide a written report with pictures based on the parameters you provide. If the shipment fails to meet the written specifications you sent before production, you’ll be able to return the shipment to the factory for rework or replacement.
In order to provide the best inspection possible, specifications need to be detailed and cover a range of areas concerning the product. What kind of factors should you be looking to inspect?
Product Finish
The surface of the part should conform to your standards. Whether the part is finished by plating, machine finished, heat treated, powder coated, or vibratory finished, the part’s aesthetics should be checked out. The texture of the part should also be inspected when needed.
Product Tolerances
All dimensions in the drawings of your parts should be inspected. These can include the concentricity, radii, lengths, widths, diameters, countersinks, threads, material consistency and more.
Product Safety and Function
How your product is supposed to work should be inspected also. A shipment of cups might be checked for leaks. A hairdryer might go through a voltage test. How the product is supposed to perform should be thoroughly reviewed.
How Many Parts Should be Inspected?
In one of the more common inspections, the inspection company will pull a batch of random parts from a shipment to inspect.
What will usually happen is a larger portion of the visually reviewable number of the parts may be examined and a smaller number will go through a 100% inspection.
Inspecting 100% of all the dimensions and all the parts of a shipment can be time consuming and more expensive, so unless it is absolutely necessary that your shipment is completely and wholly without flaw, it may not be the right choice for you.
The general cost is $350 for the optional service, though this can vary based on location.
Using the optional third party inspection service can bring peace of mind and provide great quality control.
Looking to get started? We can help with your product quality inspections, Contact us now!