You cannot carry out business without having standards or coming across some form of measures. Everything in life has standards. But let’s focus on the criteria that make your selling more manageable and your high-quality products. Setting clear quality standards for the products you want to be manufactured, especially from China, is non-negotiable.

Quality standards are documents that provide specifications, guidelines, or characteristics used to ensure materials, products, and processes are fit for their purpose.

Quality control standards will help you:

• Satisfy your quality requirements
• Ensure your products are safe for use
• Comply with regulations
• Meet environmental safety regulations

Although the use of quality standards is voluntary, you must know that some government agencies will require it. Secondly, there is no credible inspection service company that will not use quality inspection standards. The point is, you cannot run away from Quality Inspection standards.

Most countries have national standardisation bodies for buyers and sellers. For example, there is the British Standard (BS), Russian Standard (GOST), German Standard (DIN), etc. However, many countries are also part of the International Organisation for Standardisation- ISO. The ISO standards are cross-border standards and are the most widely used standards that affect you, the seller and those are the standards we will examine.

QUALITY STANDARDS AND PRODUCT INSPECTION

As a seller, you want your product to be of good quality and meet international standards. That is why you need to ensure that your inspection company to inspect according to internationally recognised standards. The table below gives examples of standards and the areas they apply.

AQL (ACCEPTABLE QUALITY LIMIT) INSPECTION STANDARDS

An AQL is a probability limit selected for a given product or process. Usually, there are three limits chosen, and each boundary (level I, II, or III) is distinct for each category ( Major, Minor, or Critical). The AQL tables help determine whether the defect identified and the number of products with defects are in an acceptable range to pass quality standards or to fail them.  You don’t have to worry about solving probability on your own, as AQL tables already made, which will help you and your inspection company know what is considered as an acceptable standard.

CLASSIFICATION OF PRODUCT DEFECTS

You might have looked at the first-ever inspection report you got and wondered, “how does this defect come out as worse than the other defect?” The defects are in three types:

1. Critical: are unsafe defects or harmful to anyone that would use that product. They include illegal defects.
2. Major: are defects that reduce the use of the product or the visual appeal of the product reducing its sale value.
3. Minor: defects that won’t reduce the product’s use but might reduce the sale value because they don’t look good.

During an inspection, the general rule is: if the same sample has several defects, count only the most severe deficiencies but if its a critical flaw, reject it on principle, but the inspection company should still inform and consult with you.

It is essential for you to have well-defined requirements for quality control, with precise specifications checked against an international standard. This ensures that your specifications and the quality standards used by your inspection service company match. Quality standards are what is in between you and that good quality product that you need. Remember, no product is manufactured without a quality issue. For this reason, quality inspections done in line with quality standards will lessen the number of product quality issues.