Quality and turnaround experts should be quivering in fear. Apparently there's a new bunch of gurus who can create miracles of quality improvement in record time... and they hail from China. A hat tip for UK reader Alex for sending me this article.
A four-month campaign to improve the quality of Chinese products has been successful and has helped boost the credibility of the ''Made in China'' label, an official said Wednesday.
Not too shabby. Fixing the processes and systems at a couple hundred thousand factories in four months. I should hire a few of those folks for my operations. I wonder how they do it...
During the campaign, which began in August and ended in December, 98,000 food manufacturers were certified and 120,000 small food businesses — the heart of many of China's chronic safety woes — signed pledges to meet quality standards, Li [Changjiang, head of the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine] said.
That's a lot of audits. I wonder how in-depth they really were. And we all know that signing a pledge leads to fundamental and lasting quality improvement, right? Hmmm... there must be some deeper incentive...
Some 1,187 cases involving the production and sale of bogus food, pharmaceuticals and agriculture products were investigated, Li said without giving details. In all, 1,480 people have been detained in those cases and another 64 have been arrested in schemes involving counterfeit blood protein and vaccines for the blue ear pig disease, Li said.
For those of you that may not remember, being "detained" in China is not a short vacation with some free meals. The head of China's version of the FDA learned that the hard way a few months ago, and is now pleading his case in front of the pearly gates. I guess that's one way to create rapid change!
''The international image of 'Made in China' has been strongly upheld,'' Li said.
Yes it has. But probably not in the way Li envisions.