Initial Production Check

Case Study - Quality Control and Honesty - Exposing the Sticky Situation

Asia quality control

Imagine trying to put together a puzzle where some pieces don't quite fit. That's a bit like what happened here – but with a pepper grinder. The company said they checked everything, but when we went to see the products, they were all mixed up. So, we started looking closely.

 

At first, the factory was really helpful. They sent two people to show us the products. We looked at a few and they seemed okay. But then, we noticed something strange on one of the products – the logo had some sticky stuff that wasn't dry yet. The factory explained that they were rushing in the morning and didn't wait for the glue to dry properly. We got a bit suspicious and decided to investigate more.

 

We saw that the two helpers always took products from the same box. This made us wonder if something was going on. So, we decided to check products from different boxes. Guess what? We found that a lot of the logos on the products could easily come off when we touched them (photo 1). Some logos had even fallen off completely (photo 2)! When we asked the factory boss about this, at first, they tried to make excuses and said it was just a small problem. But as we kept looking, more and more logos were falling off, and that's when the factory finally told us the truth.

 

It turns out the factory was supposed to stick the logos on according to the design the customer wanted (photo 3). But they had trouble with the glue they were using. They were in a hurry and used double-sided tape instead. Then, the day before we came to inspect, they realized the logos were coming off, but they didn't have time to fix it properly. So, they tried to trick us by showing us some products they had fixed secretly while we were checking others.

 

They even asked us not to tell the customer about the problem, but we should never accept such a request, we told the customer everything. After that, the factory tried to fix the problem, but they still used the same kind of tape. Even though it looked fine on the spot, we were worried that the logos might come off after some time or in hot weather. We told the customer about this worry and wrote it all in our report.

 

This story shows how important it is to do things right and be honest. It also shows that we take our job seriously and want to make sure everything we check is really good quality.

 

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