One of the greatest challenges faced by the importers is keeping the shipments on schedule. Delay shipment is impossible to avoid when for example, you have to deal with serious quality issues that you find just before the shipment. This is the reason why importers should have many plans to avoid production and shipping delays. Here are some tips for the importers to prevent the shipment delay:
1. Knowing the source of the problems
To understand how to avoid shipment delays, as an importer you have to determine what causes them. Many suppliers are frequently struggling to ship the goods to their customers on time due to several reasons, and sometimes the reason for delayed shipment is due to a customer’s error. In most cases, mistakes in the documentation, bad weather, local events, and holidays become some of the common causes of shipping delays.
2. Be clear before the mass production
The first step in avoiding production and shipment delays is to work with reliable and honest suppliers from the beginning. However, this is often easier said than done. How can you be sure your suppliers will stay on schedule if you haven’t worked with them before? While there is no exact way to examine suppliers’ experiences, however, being clear with them regarding the product quality and its specifications from the beginning can help you to prevent the delayed shipment.
Requesting a product sample from your suppliers also becomes a way to communicate with your suppliers in order to ensure the product’s quality and specifications
Identifying product defects at the end of production almost always leads to shipment delays as you wait for your supplier to fix and rework defective units.
Reviewing the product samples will allow you to identify any defects or other quality issues before mass production begins.
3. Production monitoring is important
Pre-Shipment inspection is important to know the final information once your order is done or before it shipped. However, as a matter of fact, discovering the quality issues after all the products are finished sometimes is too late and can affect the shipping time. To prevent this kind of issue, conducting production monitoring to inspect earlier in the production stage is necessary. You don’t have to wait around for your order to be finished to check product quality.
There are three quality control inspections importers can conduct throughout the production:
- Pre-production inspection: Focusing on the raw materials or other components before the production begins
- During production inspection: The key inspection of the product quality inspection that could be done when 15-80% of the order is complete
- Pre-shipment inspection: Inspection of finished production units when 80 percent or more of the order complete
To inspect your products in the early stage of the production process allows you to identify and fix the problems before they affect the entire order. You can avoid shipment delays and in the worst case, your supplier could rework the defective units faster.
Managing production lead times and shipment delays often go hand in hand with managing product quality. Managing expectations with your suppliers will help them meet your standards and prevent miscommunication, misunderstandings, and delays.
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