Wrong!

Different materials exhibit different properties and therefore come with a different set of constraints.

Sometimes, you don’t know what those constraints are until the pre-production prototype is made. Experience reduces error in guessing how materials behave under certain circumstances, but does not reduce it entirely. Computer simulations can also reduce error in complex products. However, there is nothing like the real thing to figure out where improvements can be made to maximize the properties of the material chosen.

For example, a few months ago I developed a messenger bag for an Indonesian-based bag design company/manufacturer, based on one of their classic models. This bag design had previously been made from cut polypropylene packaging pouches and/or cut toothpaste tubes. The cut materials, sewn together in patterns patchwork-style, are fairly rigid, unlike ordinary fabric, so tend to hold their shape when made into a box-shaped messenger bag. However, to take that product, and then to manufacture it from recycled advertising billboards – is a whole different matter.

For one, the billboard material is not rigid but is fairly thick, and kind of flops and crushes awkwardly when worn, if not guided into shape. To overcome this, I had to insert a rectangle of flexible plastic (like a kind of polypropylene black plastic board available from material suppliers) into the bag flap, to “guide” it gently into a square shape.

The second problem that arose was something I would not have envisaged. Basically, the company’s outsources had been using ballpoint pen to trace the bag patterns on this new billboard material, when they should have been using 2B pencil or special tailors chalk. Due to this, there were more than several bags which were scarred with unsightly pen stains – this reduced the visual appeal of the product and made it look dirty. Ballpoint pen ink absorbs into the surface of the billboard and stains it, and because of the printed nature of advertising billboards,using removal agents will only remove the print and just fades the ballpoint mark slightly. The result of the repair is worse than the initial problem. Needless to say, ballpoint was banned from billboard immediately.

The third issue I encountered related to the selection of material graphics. Advertising billboard is not like fabric, where there is a predictable pattern. Because every single billboard is different, it is a conscious design decision to decide on where to cut the pattern. It’s not as easy as it looks. The most interesting graphics need to go on the most visible part of the product. Not only that, but because billboard is a reused material, scuffs, holes and folds in the material have to be strategically avoided. Then, when the cutter is a different person to the sewer, sometimes what one person had in mind may be different to what the other person had in mind.

So, several of the first 20 samples of the new bag design came back with some issues concerning the choice of graphic. Problems included:

(1) Choosing a more interesting graphic for the inside of the bag than for the outside flap.

(2) Cutting an interesting graphic for the outside flap, but sewing it so that the more interesting part was on the back of the bag, not the front.

(3) Choosing an interesting graphic for the outside flap, but placing the pattern incorrectly, so that the interesting graphic was awkwardly positioned on the top of the bag, rather than the front.

How do you Quality Control design ability/sensibility – and then communicate that to your manufacturers? Do you have to wait for them to make mistakes before you rush after them to correct those mistakes? Is it time efficient in the short term or the long term, to create documents detailing what gets the green tick and what gets the red rejection? How do you then ENFORCE quality control standards?

A no-compliance no-pay system for quality control seems to work fairly well in these cases. After making the company’s outsources aware that certain practices would no longer be acceptable, I implemented a policy that any further orders taken after a Quality Control issue had been identified MUST comply to new standards, or the company will refuse to pay. It sounds harsh to “punish” producers in the developing world by withholding payment for making products which exhibit manufacturing faults and which don’t comply with the company’s high standards – but they are given the chance to rectify the matter, and if they don’t comply, the company would otherwise have to pay for the materials wasted, so why should anyone be paid for shoddy work? The company’s customers won’t pay for seconds. Rejected items = no sales = no pay. It makes economic sense.

Previously, there was a policy where the sewers / outsources were receiving a 50% payment per piece for each item rejected by QC (Quality Control). In that case, each rejected item was accepted, and stockpiled under “Rejects” and sold for 50% of normal retail price at local bazaars and fairs. However, the stockpiles of rejected items were building up significantly, and sales were not going well, as customers would prefer to pay a little bit more for the standard quality product. When I came to the company as a Product Design consultant, an order had been placed for 50 bags from one of their outsources. From those 50 bags, there were 42 which were acceptable, and 8 rejects! That meant, a reject rate of 16%, which is completely unacceptable. Because the sewers were still making money, even at 50% of the normal price per piece, this was fostering an attitude of lazy workmanship – they had no real incentive to be more careful, or increase their skills, or to change their practices to reduce the reject rate.

By aiming for zero tolerance for manufacturing faults, I moved the company to a no-compliance no-pay system for QC. This reduced the overall reject rate to 1-2%. Rejected items that could be repaired were required to be taken back by the outsource and repaired during their own time, so that they items could then pass QC tests. Most items were repairable, and the outsource were then paid full price for the item as agreed in the Work Order. This is not only a fair solution for both parties, but also reduces the rate that faulty items come back to the company, because the sewers are forced to conduct their own in-house QC and/or be more careful at each step of the sewing process. If they make a mistake, it saves the sewer more time in the long term to fix it right away, rather than wait for us to discover the fault, and then have them pull the item apart again at a later date in order to fix something that happened early in the sewing process.

Overall, it is a win-win situation for all, when quality is upheld. The sewers/outsources gets more money in the long term while improving the efficiency and skills of their workforce, the company no longer loses money, and the customers are happy, having come to expect a fantastic high-quality product.