Outsourcing product assembly to China has helped many Western companies expand their market reach and maintain competitive pricing.

It’s a simple yet effective process for those who want to increase productivity without breaking the bank or spending too much time waiting for shipment deliveries.

Do you take efficiency into account when planning to assemble a product? To improve your abilities at assembling products in China, here are five tips for business owners to keep in mind. Let’s get started.

1. Avoid Intellectual Property (IP) Theft 

First off, as a brand owner, it is imperative to always keep your intellectual property (IP) intact. If this leaks out of course there will be legal action taken against you and it becomes a difficult process.

To ensure you’re making the right decisions when it comes to choosing an assembly partner and avoiding IP theft, do some research on how trademarks and patents work in China. Then find a supplier with a good reputation and a proven track record for helping other businesses succeed.

We also highly recommend having your chosen assembly partner sign NNN (Non-Disclosure, Non-Use, and Non-Circumvention) agreements to protect your confidentiality like product details, drawings, marketing strategies, etc. 

If your potential assembly partner has any issues signing these agreements, then this should be a red flag and you may need to look for alternative options. Because if anything goes wrong with your IP rights, then that becomes an extremely difficult problem to deal with and you’ll have to postpone your assembly project. 

2. Pay Attention to the Lead Time 

Lead time is the period of time between an order being placed and the final product being received. The short lead time means the faster you can get the products.

As the old saying goes, time is money. Reducing leading time is an important goal when making products in China. There are many benefits to this activity such as:

• Outpace your competition
• Lower additional costs like warehousing costs and logistics costs
• Quicker replenishment of stock to avoid stockouts and backorders

So, when you plan to start your product assembly project in China, you have to ask your service provider about the lead time before starting the project. If they refuse to offer an accurate reply, they may not have confidence in dealing with your project or would rather make false promises than get things done properly. In this case, communication is key. Try to keep everything clear, concise, and to the point, so it’ll be easier for both parties to understand without confusion.

Not only your customers will be happy to purchase and receive products in a timely fashion, but also you will be delighted with the short lead time. This is especially true for Amazon sellers who need to optimize their inventory performance so they can avoid being out of stock and having to pay high warehouse fees because they are running out of space.

3. Use Quality Control Services 

Customers expect you to deliver high-quality goods that meet their needs. If they receive defective products that don’t meet these expectations, it will damage your company.

Therefore, you should consider quality control services. 

Quality control is an important process aimed at ensuring that the product quality meets your requirements and standards.

By conducting quality control during or after the product assembly process, you can determine whether the defective rate is within an acceptable range, which is a good way to improve efficiency. Because this provides assurance to both your business and your customers and minimizes loss.

If the defective rate is too high that you can’t feed up with it, you should talk to your supplier if they can offer a solution before shipping out faulty products.

4. Streamline the Logistics

Logistics chains are a lot more complicated these days than they used to be.

More than one company is involved in any given shipment, not to make mention the number of distributors and points for unloading or reloading cargo.

Moreover, due to Covid-19, international freights are in shortage, and logistics fees are going up.

Manufacturing and trading companies are trying to accomplish every logistics mission from start to finish and aim to do so in the fastest and cheapest way possible.

At this point, to improve efficiency and maintain costs, you can consider ordering consolidation services instead of shipping all products on your own.

A consolidation service is ideal if you wish to have all your goods shipped together as a single international shipment to minimize your shipping costs.

5. Work with an Experienced Supplier 

Now that you have a better understanding of how to improve efficiency when getting products assembled in China, it is time to take these factors into consideration before making your final decisions about who will be your best fit to deal with your project.

Finding a supplier to assemble your product is easy in China. However, looking for an experienced and reliable supplier is still a time-consuming job. 

Take your time and reach out to suppliers who have dealt with similar projects before, so there are fewer chances for making mistakes. Focus on finding an assembly partner that can provide both efficiency and high-quality output. 

Partnering with Shield Works, founded in 2020, as an offshoot of the British-owned and managed C2W Group located in the South China Greater Bay Area, things will be easier.

Whether you are an established brand or a new startup, Shield Works is a reliable and professional partner providing customized manufacturing and precision assembly for Western companies who are fed up with poor product quality, lack of transparency, and are worried about reliability and delivery time from their Chinese suppliers.

We can build a tailor-made solution based on your situation to meet your standards and requirements. Start your journey by reaching out today to discuss your product and learn how we can help.