A customer of mine from California works in the tech industry and he was telling me about how it can work with Chinese suppliers. In one example they were buying a circuit board and they specified that they wanted the highest quality, QC and they would be willing to pay more, no problem. The first few batches of the boards came in and they were perfect and built exactly to their specifications. Later though when more boards came in they were "cost reduced"... They complained and the Chinese supplier said that they had reduced cost and shipped more product for the same price. He said that they told them that's not what they wanted and it was really hard to get the Chinese to understand that a company in the US would not always go for the cheapest price. In other words the Chinese can build great quality but for some reason they seem to be stuck in a rock bottom price mentality which seems strange.GerryP wrote: ↑Tue Nov 14, 2017 10:13 am I have no soapbox on which to stand. The only reason to question a product's specification by country of origin comes down to whether their industry is sufficiently advanced to manufacture the product. It doesn't matter whether it's rubber tub ducks or jet engine turbine blades.
The Chinese have a competitive aerospace industry. So it should probably go without saying they are sufficiently advanced in materials and processes.
The one and only reason you can and do get cheap, poorly made crap from China or any Third World country is because the company contracting the manufacturing has set a very low standard out of cost consideration. And if cost is the prime consideration -whether it's made here or elsewhere- then you get that product with appeal to the price shopper. China can pour and machine a cylinder head just as good a Dart or Brodix or anyone else, but no one is asking them to do that.
You can blame the Chinese for sub-standard crap that comes to our shores but the real culprit is whoever set the manufacturing standard for the job. You'll pay for the high end no matter where it's made.
Another time he said that they did a design and then went for the lowest price planning on doing their all of the QC in house and just scrapping the boards that were bad. He said that while this was wasteful it worked out ok and it was actually an easier concept to get across to the Chinese.