Product category:
Services for the Subcontracting Industry
News Release from: ChinaSavvy HK | Subject: Sourcing
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 12 April 2007
Effective sourcing from China saves
GBP11/2m
ChinaSavvy has organised the production of self-closing brass hinges in the Guangdong province of China for a multi-national bathroom equipment supplier, resulting in large cost savings.
A major multi-national company in the bathroom equipment industry is saving over GBP11/2m a year and producing high quality self-closing brass hinges with accuracies of 0.02mm since using ChinaSavvy to source production in China's Guangdong province The company, which cannot be named, is part of an international group which has an annual turnover of around GBP4bn and was having its hinges produced in Germany at a cost of around GBP200 per pair
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 24 Sep 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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The company chose to redesign the part slightly and asked ChinaSavvy to look into getting it produced in China.
The result is that the parts are now made for under GBP40 per pair to the same quality finish and specification and the company is so pleased that it has already given ChinaSavvy orders worth GBP150,000.
The overall contract is expected to be worth around GBP350,000 a year with between 8000 and 10,000 hinges produced per annum.
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The hinge is one of 25 different products that ChinaSavvy now handles for this customer, including a large number of diecast parts.
What makes this project different from most others is that, because of the sheer diversity of the production processes involved, ChinaSavvy was unable to find a single company that could produce the parts to the specifications and quality needed.
In the end, ChinaSavvy identified 4 different suppliers that could each complete the separate stages of the production process to the required standard and is now overseeing the entire project, managing the quality control at every stage on more than 60 components.
There are an additional six companies supplying components for the hinges which ChinaSavvy also manages.
Among the many stages of the production process are forging the brass, polishing it to a mirror finish, CNC machining the parts to 0.02mm accuracy, polishing it again, plating it with nickel and chrome and assembling the final hinge.
Because the product needs to open and close about 30,000 times in the field, it has a lifetime guarantee so ChinaSavvy not only has to ensure it is built to a very accurate specification but also that it is plated to a high level British Standard (Service Condition 2).
ChinaSavvy also managed the manufacture of the injection moulds used to produce four components in the hinge.
Says Christopher Devereux, CEO of ChinaSavvy, a specialist in sourcing manufacturers in Guangdong for UK, US and European companies: "The customer is delighted with the new hinge and says it is a much better product all round.
More importantly, they are very happy with how we have managed the whole project and how we oversee every single stage of what is a highly complicated production process.
While the much lower cost per hinge is obviously a benefit, the most important part of this exercise for our customer was that we managed and controlled everything with strong emphasis on quality.
This is often a major worry for companies looking to switch their production to China but we have proved that, even in the most complex cases, there is nothing to worry about".
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