Pre-Shipment quality inspection (PSI)

Pre-shipment quality inspections, a very important step in the quality assurance procedures when you have your products manufactured abroad. During a pre-shipment inspection (PSI), a third party quality inspector checks the quality of your goods before they are shipped out to your address. 

The pre-shipment quality inspection

You have decided to produce your products in China, but how can you assure that the products meet your requirements? Performing a PSI helps to check the quality of your goods before they are shipped to your address. This inspection is performed at the factory when at least 80% of the order is packed and ready for shipping. Random products are selected and checked for defects. This helps to prevent unpleasant surprises when the products arrive at your doorstep.

“A quality inspection in China drastically reduces the quality risks that you are dealing with when producing overseas”.

Acceptance Quality Limit

When performing our quality inspections, we refer to the Acceptance Quality Limit (AQL). The AQL indicates the maximum acceptable number of defective products during an inspection. Unfortunately, there are almost no such things as 100% error free mass-productions when you are dealing with custom-made or private label productions. Therefore, the AQL tables are used as an industry standard quality reference to perform quality inspections.

How does the AQL method work?

The most common and widely used AQL level is level II. When determining the maximum acceptable quantity of defects, we distinguish 3 different type of defects:

(1) Critical defects: We maintain an AQL 0% toleration for critical defects. These are defects that are totally unacceptable and could potentially cause harm to end users and/or do not comply with market regulations. This means that 0% defective items are allowed in your production.

(2) Major defects: We maintain an AQL 2.5% toleration for major defects. These are products that would usually not be considered acceptable by the end user. This means that there will be no more than 2.5% major defected items in your total order quantity.

(3) Minor defects: We maintain an AQL 4% toleration for small defects. These are products with small deviations from the order specifications, but most end-users would not mind. This means that there will be no more than 4% minor defected items in your total order quantity.

Table 1

If you want to determine the total amount of products to be inspected based on your order quantity, you may find it handy to look in the table above. Let’s suppose your order quantity is 2000 pieces. If you cross inspection level II with an order quantity of 2000 pcs, you will see letter K. The letter K indicates the inspection sample size to be tested and can be read in table 2.

Table 2

In the next step, you can determine the maximum allowed number of major & minor defective units. JDLsourcing has maintains an industry standard percentage of 2.5% for major defects and 4.0% for minor defects. If you cross the horizontal row of the letter K with the vertical row of 2.5, you will see that the maximum number of major defects is <7. This means that out of the 125 products that have to be inspected, a maximum of 7 major defects are allowed. The order will be rejected if the number of major defects reaches 8 pieces or more.

Pre-shipment quality inspection by JDLsourcing:

The only way to perform a professional pre-shipment quality inspection with care is by booking certified third party quality  inspectors. Our office in Zhejiang province China, is aware of our quality standards and can assist during quality inspections for a second opinion. In addition, we rely on a trusted and trained team of professional third party quality inspectors who help to inspect goods that are produced in other provinces like Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Fujian. This helps to ensures that your goods are properly checked before they are sent out to your doorstep. Mistakes or rejected inspections can be solved on spot by repairing or replacing the rejected products. Furthermore, JDLsourcing uses the AQL inspection of level II during quality inspections, which means that a tolerance of up to 2.5% of the products produced may have major errors. In this way we ensure that you will not be faced with unpleasant surprises when your goods arrive. !

JDLsourcing is the specialist when it comes to manufacturing in China. With years of experience and the right knowledge and mindset, JDLsourcing has been able to make many customers happy. Let us take away your purchasing worries. For more information about producing in China, please visit our ‘manufacturing in China’ blog.

Contact us now in case you have any questions or in case you would like to receive a tailored quotation for your project. Our team of experts is ready to help you produce your products succesfully.