Attitude to product specs - cultural issue?

[Scoobyqueen]

My company recently hosted a conference for manufacturers of pharmaceuical and veterinary products. For the companies with manufacturing the China, the story repeated itself.

One company discovered that quality problems started to appear. When he investigated he found that the local factory manager had decided to swap suppliers several times during the process (without telling HQ) simply because they were cheaper. The result was a marked deterioration in quality and ultimately customer problems. Another example was a veterinary company who received China manufactured products and found that part of the registered trade name was missing (which makes it illegal to sell in Germany - and actually the example quoted could be compared to a character just mising a stroke or two) another time the logo had been printed in black, not blue, and yet another time the factory had just decided to replace bits of the polymer mix to create a cheaper version. These are just some from a long list.

Most of the companies I spoke to had learnt from their experiences and had put things in place to avoid such incidents. The main trend though was to withdraw from manufacturing in China for this and also other reasons.

It would be interesting to understand the reasons behind such incidents and indeed whether it is cultural. If the reason is purely price ie making a quick bug then the strategy makes no sense because it only works short-term. From how I had understood the Chinese working method, they do as they are told in which case such arbitrary decicions cannot be explained either.

[*yuan*]

It's hardly to judge if it's cultural reasons causing the series of incidents. Personally sometimes i too be sort of confused while contakting with some german organizations:)

-By the experience I've got from chinese and none-chinese business managers who work in China, it's almost a common discovery that chinese employees are not so willing to report (contingency) to higher authorities or even to peers. Perhaps it's conventional due to their sense of value. (it depends on...)

-Plus,"they do as they be told" is thought to be a german style by many people.is it?

Hopefully my ideas to the reason help some.