The Guide to Bone China Tableware Quality Control

Introduction

Quality of bone china products is critical to satisfying your customers and retaining their loyalty so they continue to buy from you in the future. Quality bone china products make an important contribution to long-term revenue and profitability. They also enable you to charge and maintain higher prices. Therefore, Bone china tableware quality control is essential to building a successful business that delivers products that meet or exceed customers’ expectations. So how do we ensure the quality of bone china products? What are the quality control measurements we take?

Case study

As a business owner or a buyer for companies who have been in tableware business for many years, you must have met many suppliers in person, let alone the cold emails you got in your mailbox. All claiming to have the best quality as they know that’s what you care about.

“What’s the feature of your products?” You asked.

“We have the best quality with the lowest price!”

Having heard that so many times, I can imagine your eyes rolling. Still, you asked,” Could you be more specific?”

“Hmm… Er…”

End of story.

What a pity! Quality is an arms race between you and your competitors, each time your competitor improves their products, they change the basis of competition, of course, you want to take the initiative here and give yourself a chance to win this race, but finding a qualified bone china products supplier seems so hard you just had to keep searching.

Here is the case with us.

You deserve the highest quality that matches your demand when it comes to manufacturing and packing selection, for bone china tableware, it is more obvious, as a high-end choice of ceramic, people always have a higher expectation for quality and user experience, you don’t want to let them down. Besides, any breakage during the way from the factory to your warehouse means that all efforts are in vain, as no matter how attractive your designs were, they are just trash when broken.

That’s why our quality control system extends throughout the whole process, from raw material to final delivery to the warehouse.

So why did we emphasize on the quality?

Disadvantage of bone china tableware quality control

The disadvantage of bone china tableware quality control is obvious

1. The process is difficult, time-consuming, and costly. It brought complaints from workers, extra cost for hiring more people doing more jobs while in some factories, these positions don’t even exist or these jobs are neglected.

2. The principle scares some clients away as they assuming the products we offer are expensive. (We are NOT by the way!) However, price is not our advantage though, those who aim at getting the cheapest price are not a good fit for us. With the extra efforts and cost to control the quality, we don’t compare ourselves with those who just deal with stock and do one-time-job service.

3. It does not prevent waste of resources when products are faulty.

4. It requires all people involved to be more responsible. The overall quality control need for factory-wide commitment to quality improvement, and the difficulty of achieving this commitment. All levels of workers must be on board for the program to be truly successful. Any lack of effort or resources will undermine the success of the program, causing negative ripples throughout the factory.

Advantage of bone china tableware quality control

The advantage of bone china tableware quality control is obvious too.

1. For B2B cooperation, we always aim in the long run. Quality is the first and most important factor to get the business to survive and expand. Providing good quality products can help you form a stronger cooperation relationship with our clients, and expand the business in the future, not only with existing customers but also with new customers from referrals.

2. Avoid any risk or complaints from clients or end-customers that resulted from poor quality. Manufacturers with quality control procedures in place are far less likely to face product recalls or place customers at risk from poorly made products. There was a report that someone got hurt when enjoying his beverage as when the hot water pouring in, the cup just exploded, how scary is that! Although they were settled in the end, it ruined the company’s reputation, this danger was caused by the missed inspection of a major flaw which should avoid in the first place. With proper quality control the cost associated with these recalls can be steep. 

3. As it seems hard to believe, it shortens the production time and avoids the waste of related material, as we don’t wait until the end inspection to identify the mistakes and redo over, we control it from the beginning.

The list goes on.

·Maintain or improve your position in the market

·Improve safety

·Reduce liability risks

·Contribute to overall positive branding of our fine bone china product.

So how do we control the quality of our bone china products?

How to Implement bone china tableware quality control during Production

So how to conduct bone china tableware quality control?

Bone china tableware quality control can be painful. Often, it is done at the end of the production process, only catching defects after the fact.

However, The key to quality control is not to check the goods when it’s finished but to control the quality of raw materials and the whole production process.

By monitoring products at the end of production as well as reviewing the products’ production process, factory can solve problems more efficiently, saving time and money.

Except for forming a standard quality management system, what’s more important is strictly following the standard in the actual production process.

As easy as it may sound, many companies find it difficult to stick to it for a variety of reasons in practice. This is often the main reason for repeated product problems.

To implement an effective quality control program, first create and document the approach to bone chin products quality control. This includes:

• Defining the quality standards for each piece of bone china product
• Selecting the quality control method
• Defining the number of products/batch that will be tested
• Creating and training employees for quality control
• Timely report and correction action.

Bone china tableware making process

To explain the So how to conduct bone china tableware quality control process, let’s start with a brief introduction of the production process here.

First, we need to prepare white bone chinaware and the decal, the decal sheet is what we used to decorate the surface of the bone China products with the designs provided by the customer. We will cut and apply the decal paper on the surface of the white bone china products after soaking in water, then after some cleaning and drying job, the products will be put into kiln and fire for 4 hours at the temperature of 700-800 degree, then we will get the products with the design stick on the surface that will never fade.

To know the through production process of fine bone china, click here.

If the products are with gold decorated the edge or handle, professional technique workers will paint the gold with brush and after it’s dry, the products will be put in the kiln to fire again for the same amount of time, and then we get the final bone china products.

Bone China tableware quality control management

So how do we conduct the bone china tableware quality control? Starting from the selection of bone china whiteware, there are 4 times quality checks during the production and 2 times of checking after packing, all in the purpose of ensuring the quality of the products.

We will discuss the whole bone china tableware quality control process by classifying the conduct person, standards, inspection reason, and tasks.

1. Incoming raw material quality check

The raw material here means the white bone china products, including bone china plates, mugs, bowls, all of them. Quality control mainly comes from 2 aspects.

A. Choice of white bone chinaware.

After the bone china whiteware produced in the factory, before they packing, a professional inspector will check the quality and classify them into 3 rates. A – good quality. C- average quality. D – sub-quality products. For orders that have very tight price control, to gain profit, suppliers might use AC mixed rate products to lower the cost or some just use D which will result in serious quality problems in the future.

In the choice of bone china whiteware, we always use the Grade A products to ensure quality.

B. Quality check of the bone china whiteware before using.

Conduct Person: Professional bone china whiteware quality inspector

Purpose: To make sure the products are up to standard before using them.

Standard: National Standard GBT13522

Job explanation: The first step of bone china tableware quality control. Double-check the quality of bone china whiteware to phase out the disqualified products that are neglected by inspectors in the bone china whiteware factory.

2. First In-process check

Conduct Person: All the decal application workers

Purpose: To double-check the quality of whiteware, like the fractures on the bottom of the items which could be easily missing checked.

Standard: Factory workers handbook

Job explanation: As the production of bone china requires much manual work. It works as a supplement to the previous check, in case any flaws were ignored in the previous check.

3. Second in-process check

Conduct Person: Professional pre-firing quality inspector

Purpose: To find out the flaws before production, as till now the mistakes can be corrected. After firing, the designs will be permanently stuck on the surface of the products.

Standard: Factory quality control measurements

Job explanation:

a. Check the logo and designs if they are in the right places.

b. To make sure the decal applies workers have done their job right, the pre-firing inspector will touch and inspect every product to check if the designs firmly stick to the surface, any bubble inside would result in the missing of the part of the design, which will be a quality problem.

4. Outgoing products quality check

Conduct Person: Pre-packing quality inspector

Purpose: As the next step is packing, this is the final thorough check, any products that have flaws should be phased out. To make sure all products ready for shipment and shelf.

Standard: Comparing to the sample confirmed or referring to the export standard.

Job explanation:

A vital step of the bone china tableware quality control. To select out the products will different kinds of quality problems. These flaws might only appear after firing. The quality problems can be divided into 2 categories, these can be repairable and these are not allowed.

Repairable cases such as black dots in the bottom, missing part of the designs, or the discontinuity of the gold line, the random gold or design that appears in the wrong places. For these products with minor infects are separated and repair until the flaws disappear.

The not allowed quality problems including the cracks that appear at the edge of the products, the fracture that appears at any place of the surface. The wrong color and place of the designs etc. These are phased out and need to produce new products to replace them.

5. Shipping inspection

Conduct Person: 3-rd party inspectors appointed by customer.

Purpose: Make sure all products are up to standard before shipping.

Standard: GB2828

Job explanation: Quality inspection conducts by 3-rd party inspectors or video check between sales and customers. Random inspection is conducted here.

6. Customer follow-up and improve

Conduct Person: Merchandiser of the PO

Purpose: To follow up on the feedback from the customers and make improvements regarding the production and delivery, to form a healthy cooperation relationship between clients and ourselves and help the growth of the business.

Standard: Feedback from customers.

Job explanation:

Improve any parts related to production and delivery that’s within our power to make a better bone china tableware quality control performance.

Conclusion

Quality comes from the details

Your customers may not be an expert in your products, but you should be and always try to offer better things for your customers.

And when customers feel that they can count on the consistent quality of your products, they’re more likely to come back again for more and spread the good words.

Consistent quality takes hard work, attention to detail and systems for monitoring and assessing whether your products meet the standards you have set. Quality control is an ongoing process that touches everything from purchasing to manufacturing to distribution.