Setzen Sie Ihre Gefahr, Plan und DANN Outsource nach China fest
Durch Richard Brubaker
Vor kurzem habe ich viel Zeit auf den Verantwortlichkeit Firmen habe aufgewendet, als man sie das outsource die Vollständigkeit ihrer Versorgungsmaterial-Kette, indem sie in einem festen Qualitätskontrolleprozeß investierten, und vor kurzem dieses ergab einen redaktionellen Verfasser aus Wall Street Journal schickte mir ein email was meine Anmerkungen anbetrifft zum folgenden sicherstellt:
„Die meisten, wenn nicht alle, Deckung, die ich gesehen habe, hat auf die Rolle Regler Beijing und Washington in der Notwendigkeit zu spielen, um Sachen oben zu säubern konzentriert. Aber ich vermute, der die grosse Rolle für den privaten Sektor vermißt. „
„Schließlich nicht haben eine Menge westliches Firmenauftreten in China einen finanziellen hauptsächlichanreiz, zum des Qualitätsstandardunabhängigen der Regler zu erzwingen? Sie müssen ihre Marke Renommees in den Augen der Verbraucher zurück verteidigen nach Hause, nicht sie? „
Zuerst bin ich total mit seiner Ausgangsbehauptung einverstanden, daß sie muß dort mehr Fokus weg gerade von den Tätigkeiten von denen in Washington und in Beijing sein ist. Tatsächlich die Primärentscheidungstreffer auf Outsourcing gegeben vom privaten Sektor, sind die Primärstütze der Verantwortlichkeit ist auf dem privaten Sektor (d.h. die, die zum outsource beschlossen) der Qualität der Waren sie sicherzustellen, holen innen von China, Bestandteile oder beendet. By “ensuring the quality” of the goods I do not simply mean that they look pretty good, or that price-to-quality differences are the same, but that these products are being produced as they were in the U.S. and being inspected as they would be in the U.S.
With regard to the second question, the correlation between quality and brand is without a doubt positive all levels,and what is so interesting to witness is how many firms will add large amounts of risk (knowingly and unknowingly) to their brands when outsourcing. Luxury, midlevel, and low end brands all try to balance brand image, quality, and pricing at some levels, and there are thousands of brand managers spending billions of dollars every year to create brand identities that will lead to customer loyalty as the desired market segment. From the management/ operational standpoint though the decision to outsource to China is a seemingly pretty easy one:
China is low cost, we can save money, and someone needs to fly to China.
Yesterday!
There is no risk assessment or gut check.. WE NEED NEED TO GO TO CHINA TO STAY COMPETITIVE becomes the company mantra and the supplier identification process begins
With this time being the most critical, the logical steps that firms take should include: evaluating supplier capabilities, capacity, price, quality, pricing terms, value add services, etc., and all of these should be considered as part of any final decision. Additionally to this, firms SHOULD be making visits to any finalists and negotiating on site, asking for production samples, running smaller test order, and taking other measures to ensure that the supplier is living up to their promises. Following the successful identification of a supplier, and negotiations, production runs get underway and inspections take place to ensure the product meets specifications and that failure rates are at acceptable levels. If there is a problem, the buyer will have someone who can work through the issues and make the necessary adjustments..
These are the steps that they have taken in the United States in house when setting up their own supplier network there, and it should be expected that the same process would be followed (with more caution) when doing this in China right? After all, with all those news stories about bad products coming from china in the newspapers and shared over coffee at trade shows, one would think that companies would be more cautious right?
Wrong.
All too often, and the recent headlines are proof of this, low and mid-level manufacturers do not take one or many of the steps… For them, their market advantage is on price, and they look for short cuts… they look to save money… they look to cut out middle men of any sort… and do not recognize that by cutting corners on resources, materials, and processes they are essentially adding what can amount to a catastrophic amount of risk into the system.
The choice to move to China is a commercial decision that is made at various levels of management, and it is the role of these managers to ensure that the right supplier is chosen, that the supply chain produces a product no different than it would in their own factory, and that there are the systems and people in place to ensure that should anything go wrong, corrections can be made. Making spot checks, investigating supply lines, monitoring production samples, packing containers in house, performing multiple tests, etc are all views as expenses rather than investments, and as such many will choose to allow their supplier to “get the job done”. Short term, the company saves money, but what these decision makers have failed to understand is that long term they risk everything.
If nothing else, the recent cases show that one bad container can endanger not only one’s brand, but the very consumers who they have built trust with.
This really is a topic that will permeate the global supply chain as it has moved from a commercial issue to a political one. My goal in posting this is not to out any one company, but to highlight that more focus needs to be placed on how companies assess the risks and then take the appropriate steps. The companies that have ended up in the news saved money short term, but what is important to understand is that they not only outsourced their products, they outsourced their brand management, to their Chinese suppliers.
This is a post that will continue…
Richard Brubaker, All Roads Lead to China
September 17th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
This is good Richard..and definately on the mark.
I live and work in China in Zhejiang Province, Taizhou.. I teach advanced and intermediate business english to local clients. Mainly Chinese busnessmen trying to come to grips dealing with western companies - usually American. First basic question; how do I send reports and understand abreviated speech. Second question, how do I handle lead times and shipping information translated from local documentation..Theres a ton of questions. Your advise about short-cuts, definately need to take that on board..This place is not America and they don’t do business like America.!! Small peice of advise to pass on.. if your doing business here, get somebody on the ground here. Don’t expect to deal with it on the phone.. Good luck.. Dave Pearce 再见