As many of you know, my wife is in the business of manufacturing in China and watching her experiences over the last 6 years has been a hard hitting lesson that Americans can't just show up and start doing business in China. The Chinese business culture is radically different specifically with regard to their view of the customer what the customer should tolerate. Lisa has an entire book of experiences that can simply be summed up as "quality matters". What she has found is that in order to control the output you have to control the manufacturing facilities and bring in her people from Taiwan, where there is a better appreciation for quality, to stand side-by-side with the Chinese factory managers. In addition, don't introduce technology until you get the business process just right.
Link via BusinessPundit: China Syndrome - Forbes.com.
Sure, the labor over there is cheap. But shoddy quality nearly killed this hi-fi startup.
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