What's the reason for companies in US seek for outsource in China?

Hi All,

This is Daisy greeting you from Best Hope Mold& Plastic Co., Ltd.

I think there must be some reason for US companies releasing mold job to Chinese manufacturers. As we know, for anything we buy we pay for its price, quality and service,so does to mold. Just like our company,our mission is :

1. To produce injection mold and plastic parts exceeding our customer's requirement
2. Bottom-Line Cost Savings
3. On Time Delivery

We always try to satisfy our clients' needs.If something goes wrong during the cooperation,we always settle problems timely and actively before our clients complain.

And we try our best to offer the clients high quality molds and plastic parts at a low price.Therefore, we have won great reputation from our customers abroad.

So that is also the reason why Foreign companies tend to cooperate with Chinese moldmakers. We are a good example!

Daisy Dai

Best Hope Mold & Plastic Co., Ltd
Website: www.bh-mold.net
Email: sales3@bh-mold.net

Hi Bleibman,

You are great, i have the same feeling with you!

I am so glad to know you here, as we learned that you are very goot at mold design engineering, injection molding etc.

At first, please let me introduce myself to you, this is jack from China shenzhen, i have been working on plastic mold design over 10 years, specialize in plastic mold design and fabrication, both in thermoplastic and thermoset mold and molding etc.

If possible i'd like to kindly make friend with you, and talk aobut mold with you...

I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks!

Best regards,
Jack

You have a deep knowing about Chinese builders.unfortunatly they are only bad aspects and you didn't find a real and right one to work with.

There are lots of mold builder in china.mainly locate in Guangdong and Zhejiang provices. And there are many agents TOO. They don't have factory, they don't even have a regular office,but they can help those small factries to find customers by sending promotion letters to probably your junk mail. PPL far away in US have no ways to find out if they are true factories or not except through websites. The worst thing abt Chinese is that they don't care their credit if it's for business aim. Websites are almost copied from others. part pictures, production capability , and facility, etc.

Another point is the price. For sure the Chinese quotes are much cheaper than US local . even you mark up your shipping ,scrap, and engineers tool trial visit cost. I used to work for a big mold Group company in UK and had awared of it. An English engineer spent half time in China. I don't see it's a must as if the mold maker is so useless, why didn't we choose another qualified one to replace? Foreigner are worried abt Chinese performance through tool design to tool trial.

Those who had find big and professional mold builder are enjoying their jobs and sequencely those big factories have full schedule and prices are higher than other medium and small size ones. My oppinion is a moderate factory is good enough for you if the facility and capability match your requirement. The service will be better in responsing your request.

I like to tell the truth even though I am a Chinese too.
Jen

Chinese mould builders advertise by stealing e-mail addresses from wherever they can (they don't buy the lists - I've checked - so where else do they get them?). They are almost as bad as the porno people when it comes to filling up my junk mail. They also comprise about 80% of the advertising in the trade magazines.

US mold builders don't advertise. So it's really a matter of statistics.

US buyers are utterly dazzled by the quoted costs of the Chinese shops. Unfortunately most US companies don't look at TOTAL COST. so shipping costs, scrap, the expedited freight, down time from late shipments etc. are usually 'someone else's budget'.

US Buyers don't fact check their mould builders or moulders. They're dumb enough to believe what they read in the ad's or brochures. If you don't check you really don't know what you're getting into.

It's STUPID that US company's don't advertise.
It's even more STUPID jobs are going offshore without the customer checking where the mould builder buys his steel, who's been happy in the US or Europe with these guys work etc. etc. US buyers do more research buying their family car than they do betting the company's profits on a molding source. Thus proving the adage YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID.

my two cents.

Bill

This is the inevitable consequence of series of speculators from consumers to products suppliers. Greediness of human being is the answer. When you try to complain people will tell you You get what you pay.

There are low and top class products in any country in the world,not just China.If you need high quality mould,you can visit the factory.Our company is an ISO9001:2000 certified mould making company located in China.We have manufactured and exported mould for mover 10 years,your visit will be welcomed!

We have gained good reputation from our worldwide customers who enjoy cooperating with us very much. For further details, kindly please feel free to contact us. We are always ready for any query from you.

SunOn Plastic Moulding LTD
Sophia
E-mail: sales004@sunon3d.com
Website: Http://www.sunon-id.com

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 11-20-07 AT 03:06 AM (GMT)[/font][p]

I think this is a so complex case,if you really want find a good business partner in china that maybe you will spend a long time,I work for a oversea company to find injection toolmaker supplier in china,most of factories really have capability but they can not coorperate with oversea company,otherwise some of trading company which no capability can do business with oversea company,but,the most thing is not only price,lead time,quality,but the flexible is really important as well.......
if you have some question please send to my email.I like dicuss with you in field with mold manufacturing and hope to help you.Thanks!

Steven
email:stevenlei@yahoo.cn

I have to admit there are some bad moldmakers in China.
But there are many qualified molmakers, too.

I think you can visit your supplier in China first,and check whether they have experience & capability to supply molds for you before you place any order. All of our new customers do this way.

Brian

Hi all, when we are talking about the quality of China-Made stuff, please take a look at the trillions of Global Purchasing/Sourcing office all over big city in China, why?

China-Made stuff may probably fool one or two, but can't fool all the smart business man all over the world. Once bitten, twice shy, but oveprotective will no doubt make us behind today.

we are a moldmaker from Shanghai, China. We are making precise mold directly for USA customers in Automotive indudstry and telecommunication industry.
Please take a look at our product by access our website.

http://www.drapho.com/products.asp?ClassID=4

Roison Qiu
roison.qiu@drapho.com

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 07-07-07 AT 01:28 PM (GMT)[/font][p]There are thousands of mould makers in China. I don't think all of them are not qualified. Nowadays, There technology become better and better. I think the working way and business attitude impact the working result. Lots of companies can build good moulds with good understanding of customer's thinking way. When you choose the mould maker in China, the first thing you need to investigate is the working routine and customer service capability. Good understanding will make good sense in business of both parties.

Sarah
info@risingtooling.com

Over the past 7 years, we at Delkew Ent. www.delkew.com , have imported over 180 molds from our suppliers in China to our customers in the US. We test all our molds prior to shipping, out of 180 we have add to replace one inser in one mold, there was a hairline crack. All our other molds ran well when the customer installed them in their machines. The quality of chinese molds is as good as any in the US. Some amrican companies are greedy and decide that they can do this on their own rather them paying a broker/importer such as us a modest fee to make sure that they receive quality products and services.
I visit my suppliers on a yearly basis, I have 2 fulltime Chinese engineers, one in Shenzhen adn one in Taiwan monitoring our suppliers, we communicate 24/7 with all our suppliers. When you eliminate these functions and surf the internet to find a Chinese supplier, and you get burned, don't blame the Chinese

Bernie

HI Danesh,

I appreciate your argument, but it is mostly based on perception, not facts. We have all these sayings " you get what you paid for", " Penny wise and pound foolish", etc...... Most of the horror stories you have heard can be explained simply as greed. I am an importers/Brokers and my company been doing business with Chinese companies for over 7 years, and I have over 10 years exerience working with my Chinese friends. Some companies, resent paying a middleman the modest commission and think that they can do it alone, they do very little reseach, have problem communicating because of language and time difference and then they are surprised when the tool is no good, they got what they asked for, instead of saving 30% on the tooling cost, they wanted to save 35% or 37%, it is pure stupidity and greed. This is what we offer for that modest commission, I travel to China once a year, I have 2 Chinese engineer, one in Shenzhen and one in Taiwan, monitoring our suppliers, we commmunicate 24/7 with all our suppliers. We will normally design and build the tools but we also build from customer's designs. Our engineers are occasionally finding design errors with customer's design and have corrected them. We test the tools and send good samples prior to shipping. We have supplied over 180 tools, some as large as 7500 Kg for automotive industry. We have only had to replace one insert on one tool ( hairline crack), out of all those tools. We had the new insert at our customer's plant within 10 days and we paid for the rework. That is not a bad reject rate, next time someone complains to you about the poor quality of Chinese tools, please get all the facts, you may find the the problem was with the customer not the supplier.
As far as buying American, I'm as American and the next guy, my son has been in the Special Forces (Green Beret) for the last 20 years and he is now fighting in Afghanistan. I love this country and I am concerned that we are loosing business to offshore companies. I don't know about you, but as an engineer with over 40 years of experience, I worker in union environments at General Motors and Xerox and have first hand experience with the lack of productivity coming from union workers and the lack of creativity from our company executives. Company executives lay off experiences people and the stock goes up and they make money, at the expence of productivity. Union workers put in 3 hours of work and get paid for 8, who do they think is paying for the other hours. And then everyone starts pointing fingers at China and Mexico and India for taking business away from us.....all these poor US companies, victims of these greedy foreign companies....wake up American, let's start pointing the finger at ourselves

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-04-07 AT 01:07 PM (GMT)[/font][p]Hello everyone,
It is not so complicated to discuss about the case;
Maybe some of you ever bought bad-quality tools from China, but it doesn't mean that China can not make good-quality tools; As you all know, a lot of successful companies save cost and win the competence via Chinese Low cost;

I have ever worked for a lot of mold shops in China, and they all make tools exported to USA, Europe and Japan; And customers are also very satisfaied with Chinese quality and communication;
Although there are 12 hours difference, but as for me, we work very late at night, always communicate by e-mail, by phone, and all of communication is very quick;

My company's policy for quality is that every process during manufacture should be checked and confirmed ok, then we can transfer the components to next process; so if the part structure is reasonable, generally, our T1 samples can overpass customers' requirement.

And our policy for communication requires that we solve present and potential issues during mold designs; and if any unpredictable issues should be informed to customer at once, and bring out our best solution;

In all, now the the injection industry has been roaring severely, and Chinese idea are also being changed and getting close to international step; If you want to save cost, I think choosing China is correct option, you will get profit in your business, only if you work with good company;

Jack Rao
HP Mould
www.hpmould.com
Jack_rao@hpmould.com

First off I can't believe this post brought out so many people fishing for business. (yeah that's a smart choice, you write a compelling argument on an internet post -> lets do business!)

Secondly, a history lesson, in my opinion the greatest manufacturing belt in the world started here where I am all the way to Detroit, where manufacturing is an art, and the knowledge base is deep based on 40 to 50 years of experience. China and any third world market can not compare.

Reality - you want to mold 10K parts or 10 billion. You get what you pay for. Why? because a precision tool is made with quality steel (usually from the Swiss and not cheap) and with quality machines. Machining hardened steel still takes the same amount of time where ever you are.

Why would companies try to save some $$$? because they don't think 5 minutes ahead. There has been so much consolidation that companies are so big, these buyers don't know much about molding let alone touch anything in the plant. They know how to make budgets look good on paper.

Yes you save money upfront. What about customer support? 12 hour time difference? shipping you tool back and forth for reworking and repair? even if you have it repaired locally some shops won't even touch it and it ends up costing you more.

Love your country! Don't give into the propaganda, globalization is not good for us. It does not make sense in the long term, money flowing out of the country ($700 billion trade deficit?). If the slave labor was not there it would not be so bad, try to buy a tool from Italy or another first world market.

I have heard so many horror stories like they were trying to make a thin wall part with a cold sprue. cracked plates etc.

Our new tools run perfect on the first shot without testing and we have no down time caused by poor mold quality, and our platens are still parallel. I have run molds that are 40 years old, they still make good production, because the quality is intrinsic.

My mold maker is 5 minutes down the road, not a 14 hour flight.

In china choice good company is importanted,because there a lot of
bad company

I think to judge China mold is bad or good is depend on your experience with the partner you deal with, because up to now, most of our clients said we did a good job. I know American is polite, but they are very serious in business, so I believe this is true word.

We had built mould for US customers over 15 years!
These measures may help you purchasing tool from China:
1.Confirm the tool builder understand your general tooling requirement.
2.Confirm the mould design:detailed 3D design and 2D layout with
partlist technical demand must be provided by toolbuilder;
3.Confirm the mold trial:the sample part must meet your demand bbefore shipping.

The reason is that China's mould is better price as well as better quality.At lease, our company can!

Email: wingdonlim@hotmail.com
website: www.donlim.com/www.molds.donlim.com

Well, I have to wonder why people keep getting those 'boat anchors' and why they end up paying the extra costs? Don't they have some sort of policy in place? Any guarantees? Payment plan?

We're in Korea and we've been supplying molds to a Japanese company in the USA. Our customer has never had the stories that Dave and JR spoke of.

Our customer requires us to do third party mold testing in the states. So we have a shop that runs a 300 shot trial, and we do a disassembly check. The mold shop handles any modifications or repairs if needed, and WE pay the bill. We don't even send the mold to the states till it gets approval, and that's after at least a T-3 trial/sampling.

On the last mold we did a critical part wasn't marked on the official mold drawings. Well, we had approval to ship the mold, by sea which would have gotten it there as scheduled. But they were having problems with fitting one of the areas on the part and it was discovered that the critical tolerance wasn't marked on the official drawing at the last minute. So more work and testing, and it put us behind schedule so we had to ship it by air, which we paid the extra costs for.

So we got that mold to them in spec and on time and at the quoted cost. We may have lost some money on it, but we have a satisfied customer. That's because they let us know their requirements, and we kept our guarantees. We wouldn't have received the final payment if we didn't by the way.

You need to have a set of requirements and guarantees in place and you can have a good experience in outsourcing. You just have to know what you are doing. Remember, you are the customer, so the mold shop has to agree to and follow your requirements.

Anyway, just wanted to give you a perspective of an American working for a Korean mold shop.

Good luck out there!

Steve

Who said molds from china are bad, come to visit us, we will let you know what is quality as well as low price.
my email:frank@fareast-mold.com
msn: wxthotmail@hotmail.com

If you want a way around the points you spoke about give me a call. I am located in Erie Pa.

Brian Berchtold
Technical Director
Express Tech
(814) 572-3321

Dave,

By inflating the tool repair costs and ECI costs, they are just forcing the production work to China also.

Ken M

Chinese can build A-bomb and spaceship, can not they build proper tools for American under their instruction?

Have you ever win a prize in a lottery? Have you had good communication with Chinese?

It is a bity that you have such bad experience with Chinese.but It is also your bad luck! You know there are 1.3 billion persons in China. They are like all our American, full of honest, dishonest, great quality personhood or ugly personhood, familiar with American tool operation or unfamiliar with this operation, having good or bad communicating ability.

So it is maybe because your supplier is an middleman(agent) or small with little experence in American tools or an irresponsible supplier.

Do you understand why most of Chinese farmer use cattle to till the field instead of using machinery though they can make or have such machinery?

Have market then have resonable quality!

Frank

J-Car,

Good point. Real life example: Customer wanted to save money, so they had the mold built in China. Well, Neo-Con (office furniture show in Chicago) was 4 weeks away and the mold was behind schedule. Two weeks to go the mold was complete but had not seen 1st shots or been put on the boat for the trip across the pond. Answer, AIR FREIGHT -- $10,000 express. Mold shows up, and guess what, needs work. Call local tool shop asking for help,after being told "I told you so", help was provided. Cost -- $8,000 to get it close to being correct.

Well, the parts made it to assembly, and did make Neo-Con but after several more changes that were needed for actual production, the mold cost a hill of beans more than had they built it down the street.

So what do they do next? They have another one built in China. It appears that all the check holders are seeing is the first quote, not the final bill. All for not I guess. I just know that the local tool shops are marking up repairs and E/C's to compensate for the lost dollars on building them. So the actual losers are us realists out on the floor trying to make this sh*t work. And we do.

I feel better now,

Dave

It all looks really good on paper but the total tool run cost is what everyone should be looking at. After the tool has been in production for 4 years, after 10 part changes what is the cost. How do you go about getting part changes done or looking into other modifications to the mold when the mold designer does not speak English or even live on the same continent? I have seen molders spend 5-10x what a simple change should due to the fact that the mold designs were not updated or even sent with the mold. These are issues that come up 1-2 years after production has started. I really don't care because our shop is one of the shops that deal with changes to Asian molds. Thus keep building junk Asia, we need you business.

>Heard that before, many times!!
>Still waiting....
>
>Taiwan has better quality.
>
>Tom R.

Price be the first reason.

I know a Taiwan Company in Shanghai, its molds are quite cheaper.
But the company is not very big, I have introduced some of my clients to the company.
and my client is also in America.

At the start some of the sub assemblies get outsourced for cost advantages. At some point in time the source accumulates technology and quality - this supports additional sub assemblies to be outsourced. Eventually the sources infrastructure comes together and supports the complete assembly. The process leaves the originator without real inventory and huge profits. What's wrong with that?
Besides, most of these products are of the limited life cycle that are replaced with a slightly modified design, which keeps the presses going.

The tooling business truth in China: Why do the International deem China can't offer high quality?

When I talked with some international gentlemen the China quality in the tooling trade, they told me their concerns as below:

1: China still runs non-market-oriented economy, most Chinese still don't know what true services are, namely most Chinese are not well educated.
2: in the tooling trade, the Chinese companies love to substitute materials, namely, the Chinese love to cheat.
3: China has no good machines,for example the 5 axis CNC machine, most of the work has to be finished by hands.
4: especailly for the customer from USA, which live exactly the other side of the Globe against China, the Chinese companies can't offer real time communications.

For most tooling companies here in China, that's true. For them technology is not a problem for the common business from overseas, what they lack is a clear guideline and the comprehension on services. and most of them do not know that credit is most important to build the long term relationship with the customers, material substitution is kind of suicide action.
But there are really good tooling companies here in China,who have done great success in the business from overseas, who value the customers most, who know the cost of quality and the cost of poor quality, who have overcome the issues above completely.So I can say we can deliver high quality tooling.

And there's a problem bothered me most when I worked in my former company, the implementation.which I will describe in another article.

Heard that before, many times!! Still waiting....

Taiwan has better quality.

Tom R.

I'm a Chinese, and worked as a project manager in a tooling company, my opinion on it is that we can deliver the real "China cost, American quality" services now, at least my company can.

i am a mold designer ,live in china ningbo ,i love this work ,i love this city .because this city have a lot of mold factory ,if client let me help him seek a company to fabricate mold ,you know it is very convenient. you say china mold is not very good ,it is not very exactly.our client compliment on my design is reasonable and our moldmaker is which is have more than 10 years experience,

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in the short term on less critical jobs.