China Manufacturing Decoded
Join Renaud Anjoran, Founder & CEO of Sofeast, in this podcast aimed at importers who develop their own products as he discusses the hottest topics and shares actionable tips for manufacturing in China & Asia today! WHO IS RENAUD? Renaud is a French ISO 9001 & 14001 certified lead auditor, ASQ certified Quality Engineer and Quality Manager who has been working in the Chinese manufacturing industry since 2005. He is the founder of the Sofeast group that has over 200 staff globally and offers services (QA, product development & engineering, project management, Supply Chain Management, product compliance, reliability testing), contract manufacturing, and 3PL fulfillment for importers and businesses who develop their own products and buyers from China & SE Asia. WHY LISTEN? We‘ll discuss interesting topics for anyone who develops and sources their products from Asian suppliers and will share Renaud‘s decades of manufacturing experience, as well as inviting guests from the industry to get a different viewpoint. Our goal is to help you get better results and end up with suppliers and products that exceed your expectations!
Episodes
Renaud and Adrian from Sofeast are talking about forthcoming sustainability requirements which are going to require importers to have a LOT more visibility over their supply chains, especially those who sell in the EU. They dig into how this will affect you in this episode...
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introduction.
01:40 - The EU 'Green Deal's' new sustainability requirements and what they mean.
07:35 - What sustainabil...
Sofeast's resident reliability expert and head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, joins Adrian from the team to show you the 5-step process of how to fix problem products that are being returned by customers. Everyone hopes they won't be affected by product reliability issues resulting in returns, but if it does happen this information will help you deal with the problem effectively.
Show Sections
00...
Renaud, assisted by Adrian from the team, provides a number of environmental improvement strategies based on the IEC 62430 standard for environmentally conscious design that you can follow when designing your new product.
Improving sustainability is becoming more important for businesses, especially with new legislation like the EU's ecodesign for sustainable products regulation, coming in. You don't need to implement all of these ...
Adrian and Renaud return to continue the journey through 9 of the key questions businesses that're developing new products commonly need answers to.
Here's part 2 of this podcast covering questions 5-9...
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introduction.
01:07 - 5. What is the product's production cost?
19:24 - 6. What's the pricing strategy for the product?
28:59 - 7. What is the distribution strategy?
37:52 - 8. What will the ...
Sofeast's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, is back with Adrian from the team. They're talking about manufacturing alchemy: taking a cheap product and converting it into a high-profit one! How can importers do this? Andrew shares 5 ways to boost your profits here.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic.
03:06 - Sell expensive or low-cost products?
08:11 - 1. Add value to ...
Sofeast's CEO Renaud is joined by Adrian from the team and they're going to go through 9 of the key questions businesses who're developing new products commonly need answers to.
Here's part 1 of this podcast covering questions 1-4...
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's episode.
01:22 - 1. What is the target market for the product?
07:51 - How to do market research.
13:26 - 2. What problem does the product sol...
Sofeast's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, talks us through why pilot runs are so important, the best practices and benefits, and how to plan for yours in order for it to be a success. If you're mass-producing your products you're not going to want to miss this episode!
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing today's topic.
01:10 - What is a pilot run?
02:46 - Important ways to get the...
Renaud and Adrian outline 10 common mistakes that new buyers make when buying from Asian manufacturers, especially in China. Avoid these pitfalls and you'll be far more likely to develop good relationships and get your products on time, on budget, and at the expected quality standard!
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and talking about the Hong Kong electronics fair in April 2023.
04:53 - Exploring the top mistak...
Renaud and Andrew talk about how to develop hardware products specifically for software companies used to using an agile design approach (often SCRUM) for software products that now need to create a new hardware product to support their business (such as a device that runs on the software).
They share their thoughts on the book 'SCRUM for hardware design' by Prof. David G. Ullman, warnings about the limitations o...
Renaud and Adrian are back and talking about how to comply with CE and UKCA regulations as an indication that they comply with the safety, health, and environmental requirements of the EU and Great Britain. They cover what these requirements are, the process to become compliant, how and why the UK is diverging, and more. No matter where your business is based, if you sell products in these markets you'll need to ...
Sofeast's CEO Renaud Anjoran and senior compliance officer and friend of the show Clive Greenwood are back together and talking about the challenges of quality management in China. You'll learn about communication, supply chain transparency, cultural factors that affect quality, what an effective quality management system needs to include, and a lot more in this bumper episode!
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings a...
Sofeast's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, joins Adrian to explore the topic of Design for Reliability (DfR) in detail. He explains the process you need to go through to avoid unreliable products, some warnings about what an unreliable product may end up looking or behaving like, and how the DfR process should be implemented and some commonly overlooked secrets so you know how to implement it yo...
Renaud and Adrian from Sofeast share the positive news that China is reopening its borders to all travellers today, March 15th 2023, including issuing tourist visas now. After 3 long years, we look at changes that might affect business travellers who are eager to visit suppliers in particular.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings - What is the news? (China issuing all types of visas as of March 15 '23)
03:19 - Chine...
Renaud welcomes Clive Greenwood and Sean Li of the BSI onto the podcast. They talk about the ISO 3730 standard for compliance management, how to implement it, how it is being adopted in China and how this affects you if you work with Chinese suppliers, and more.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic and guests.
03:21 - What is the ISO 37301 standard about?
06:25 - What is a compliance manage...
Renaud, Paul, and Adrian are talking about assembly and checking fixtures. You'll learn what they are, how they work, and when to work on designing them.
If improving the speed, consistency, and quality of your products during mass production is important to you, as well as reducing costs, then you need to consider implementing fixtures in production to spur these improvements.
The same can be said for checking q...
Renaud and Adrian discuss the unwelcome scenario of recurring quality problems from your outsourced supplier who's handling your manufacturing in China. They cover your quality standard, 6 tips on how to handle common recurring quality problems, and several reasons WHY these issues might be happening in the first place.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing the topic: What happens if you have repeated...
Adrian from the team and Sofeast's head of New Product Development, Andrew Amirnovin, talk about ISTA package testing. Importers should consider doing this testing to gain peace of mind that the shipping cartons they select will get their products to their destination safely. You'll learn what the tests include, how much they cost, when to do them, and much more.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings and introducing ...
Sofeast's head of Supply Chain Management, Kate, joins Adrian in this short bonus podcast with a logistics focus to explain what HS and HTS codes are, and why they're so important for importers who are shipping their products from where they're manufactured to where they're going to be sold.
These codes are added to your customs declaration and classify what your product is. Different product codes will attract d...
Inventors with a new product concept are rightly concerned with IP protection. They sometimes ask if they should invest in a patent for their new idea ASAP. Renaud and Andrew join Adrian to cover this topic here.
You'll learn about types of patents, their cost, when a product is most likely to benefit from being patented, best practices for protecting your IP that you can follow before you file a patent, and plen...
Renaud and Adrian talk about the 11 points buyers need to cover when sourcing a contract manufacturer in China for electronic products (although much of this advice is relevant to many hard goods in general and suppliers in other Asian countries, too) so you can find a partner you can rely on.
Show Sections
00:00 - Greetings & today's topic: Sourcing a CM in China for manufacturing electronic products.
02:10 - ...
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