Is During Production Inspection Necessary?

The during production inspection (or “DUPRO”) is that the second most frequent type of QC inspection, after the pre-shipment inspection(or “final random inspection”). Please view the list of the major types of quality controls.

Why is the during production inspection typically necessary?

Inspecting the products after production is finished is commonly too late. In some cases, an entire order is found unsellable just before shipment, and the manufacturer is unable to repair it. Re-ordering materials and re-producing would take a couple of months; and also the supplier refuses to do it for free.

After some such experiences, several importers conclude that quality control ought to occur earlier (during production).

The objective is to catch quality problems before it’s too late:
1）The few merchandise that were already made will (hopefully) be re-worked while not causing a delay;
2）The same problems will be avoided on the remainder of production.

If quality issues are found at this stage, importers are suggested to force the supplier to work on a corrective action plan. It’s the simplest way to document a problem to ensure it’s repaired appropriately… and also avoided for repeat orders.

A aspect regarding communication with suppliers… it’s typically better to border it this way: An inspector can come back to inspect some samples, in order to assist you change your internal QC efforts, so that we don’t have any unpunctual surprise.”

When to conduct an during production inspection?

The ideal arrangement all depends on the merchandise kind and also the experience of the factory. However some rules of thumb will be followed for 80% of goods, if these conditions are true:

• The factory is usedto producingthis type of product involving this level of complexity,
• The cycle time to get the primary finished merchandise out of the lines is not any over ten days.

In such cases, the below sketch is applicable: Let’s take the example of an order of 20,000 pieces that takes thirty days to manufacture. If some finished products seem 8 days after production started, and if 600 products are available for check 4 days later (in the early morning), the good time for a DUPRO is 12 days after production start.

There are two dangers to avoid:

Inspecting too early

The first products that get off the lines don’t seem to be representative of average quality (they are sometimes worse). And also the factory needs to have time for their internal quality control, or they’ll claim that “of course, they might not ship this type of defects.”

And if you think you can inspect products that have gone through a few processes but are not finished, you’d better make sure you can find quality problems this way. It depends on the type of products, but inspection agencies normally don’t have the experience to do that.

Inspecting too late

Most factories in Asia manufacture in bulk production–this is why finished products often do not appear before one or two weeks into production (and sometimes more).

If the client waits until 50% of the goods are finished, it is probably that another 30% are already being processed. If quality problems are found at that stage, they might have 80% of the order ready!

For more information about during production inspection, please read the next article.