Quality and inspection
What quality costs.
Quality spending is visible and the failures it prevents are not, which is why it gets cut first. The comparison worth making is not the cost of an inspection against zero, it is against the cost of the container it would have stopped.
What you spend.
Inspection at origin, per shipment or per supplier visit.
Laboratory testing, per lot for the tests that decide market access.
Audits, per site, periodically rather than continuously.
Your own time on specifications, approvals and receipt checks, which is the largest hidden cost.
What a failure costs.
The goods, if they cannot be sold. The full landed cost, not the factory price.
Return freight or disposal, and disposing of a container in a foreign port is neither cheap nor quick.
The customer, who ordered something and did not get it. On a retail listing this can be permanent.
The recall, if the product reached consumers, which is the number that dwarfs everything else.
Your time, which stops being spent on anything productive for as long as it takes.
Where the spending is worth most.
On the first order with any supplier, without exception. This is where you learn what they actually do.
On anything that decides market access: residues, contaminants, mandatory testing. A rejection at the border is the expensive failure.
On packaging, which is cheap to specify and expensive to get wrong, and which almost nobody inspects.
Before the balance is paid, because after that you are asking for a favour rather than exercising a right.
Where it can be reduced.
Frequency on a proven supplier, moving from every shipment to a sample basis, reviewed rather than abandoned.
Scope, by testing what actually decides something rather than everything a laboratory offers.
Duplication, by not testing at both ends once the origin laboratory is one you trust.
Never on the first shipment after any change: a new supplier, a new product, a new season, a new line.
Questions buyers ask.
Is inspection worth it on a small order?
Compare it against the landed cost of the container rather than against zero. On most orders an inspection is a small fraction of the value it protects, and on a first order it is the best money in the whole transaction.
Can I stop inspecting a good supplier?
Reduce the frequency rather than stopping, and review it. The shipment that fails is disproportionately often the first one nobody looked at.
What is the highest-value single check?
An inspection before the container is sealed, with the balance payable against it. It is the only moment when a problem is still cheap and the supplier still wants to be paid.
Read next.
Inspecting before it sails
The five moments worth inspecting, what a report has to contain, and the mistake that makes an inspection worthless.
Choosing who inspects
Global firm, local specialist or your own agent. Six questions that separate a real inspection from photographs.
Rework at origin
A failed inspection is a decision. Which problems can be reworked and which end the shipment.
Checking goods on arrival
Twenty minutes per delivery catches most problems while you can still act on them.
What a deposit is actually funding
A deposit is not a gesture of trust. It funds something specific, and that tells you whether the size is reasonable.
Sourcing from Indonesia?
Tell us the product, the quantity and the destination. We come back with what it involves before anyone talks about money.