Chinese New Year is approaching, and as you may already know, factories are going to be totally closed for at least two weeks. When the workers start to return, it will take a few more weeks for them to get back up to full capacity. With that in mind, there are certain things importers should be cautious about in order to manage well their supply chain and have the level of quality they expect whether they choose to ship before the holiday or after.
Before CNY
When it comes to placing orders to be delivered right before the holiday, the risks of having quality issues are far higher than usual. Delivering the goods as fast as possible to meet customers’ deadline is factories’ top 1 priority during this time. This rush to finish the production of all orders before the holiday starts can lead to serious qualities issues, especially for new products and new designs which the factory might have no previous experience in producing it. According to our monthly statistics, there’s a sharp increase at defective rate for inspections conducted in December and January, and it is even more serious for new products.
After CNY
Placing orders to be delivered right after the holiday, on the other hand, can also result in headaches depending on the scale of the factory. Small and medium-sized factories, whenever they open their doors, will surely not be making all of their production lines available during the first month. The reasons why that happens is that, many workers decide to change jobs, cities, or even opt to stay in their hometowns, which is a new trend in China. It is very difficult for the factories to hire a large number of workers and train them in a short period of time. So, the main problem importers often face when they decide to ship the goods after the holiday is delay. It’s common for us to see cases which the goods were to be shipped in February, and they turned out to be ready to be shipped only in April or even later. Besides delay, it’s also very likely that the recently-hired workers will increase the defective rate of production due to their lack of experience. But it is safe to say that, though there is a bit of an increase of the defective rate during this period, it is not as high as it is during the last weeks of the Chinese Lunar year.
In order to avoid high defective rates and delays, it’s highly recommended to Increase your stock months before the holiday so it won’t be necessary to order from factories during this sensitive time. Forecasting far in advance is a valuable procedure to adjust production times and make sure your products won’t run out of stock.
In case you haven’t planned in advance and have to place an order now, it’s very important to put a quality management plan into place and communicate very well with factory and logistic company.
Being in the quality control industry for nearly two decades, V-Trust has plenty of experience in helping buyers overcome possible problems during this period of the year. Our pre-shipment inspections and container loading supervision are also to ensure that the holiday rush at the factories does not have an impact on the quality of our customers’ products.
For more information concerning quality control, please feel free to email us at info@v-trust.com
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