>> ...  It just so happens that the Chinese can follow those guidelines and 
>> quality levels for far less money than most other countries.
>
> No they can't, that's the problem, the quality suffers in order to
> keep the price low.

But only if the organising company allows it.  Everyone who pushes suppliers 
on cost (from any country) knows that they then have to monitor quality 
levels closely to ensure that standards are met.  If you suspect problems, 
you *have* to step up quality checks, otherwise your end customers are just 
going to get annoyed with low quality products.

> This is SOP in China, they probably promised that they had good QA,
> showed a few high quality toys, falsified tests, and then went back to
> business as usual. The problem is that what shows up isn't the same
> as what was ordered, the Chineese feel free to do this because it's
> not their kids getting sick.  If they sold these toys to Chineese kids
> they'd be all looking at death sentences.  This recall is after being on
> notice from Mattel to stop using lead paint.  It's on the verge of
> being provably intentional.

So, Mattel already knew about the lead paint from this supplier, and yet 
still carried on using this supplier *without* checking that their product 
was up to the required standard?  That is just poor, really really poor.  If 
we have a supplier who did something like that, we would probably stop using 
them immediately, and if not we would stick one of our guys *in* their 
factory to check everything was in order and staying in order, and it goes 
without saying we'd check for lead in the products coming out at least once 
a day, probably more often.

Still, I guess Mattel decided not to take this sort of action because they 
knew it would cost them more money...

Post a reply to this message