What should you do if the factory don’t deliver the goods on schedule?

Many customers think that everything will be fine after finding the supplier and confirming the PI, and just wait for the goods to arrive. But confirming PI is just the beginning of the entire order and the beginning of the nightmare. Before the order was placed, the factory guarantees that the product will be completed on time. Once the order was confirmed, a series of problems followed one after another, such as the color of the product and the design file were much different, the packaging carton can’t fit so many quantities, etc.. The most troublesome thing is that the factory cannot finish the production on time.

Some time ago, a friend fell into such a dilemma.

In December last year, Lucy’s UK customer placed an order of 5 million USD, which was scheduled to be shipped in April this year. According to the normal process, it can be delivered on schedule. So the customer selected a low-price, high-quality, and fast-delivery supplier from a bunch of suppliers who could do the same product.

The customer easily waited for the goods, but what the customer didn’t expect was that there was no movement during the production period from the manufacturer. The factory neither actively reported the production status nor responded to emails in time.

The customer immediately contacted Lucy. After receiving the news, Lucy went to the factory to see what was going on. The manufacturer knew that he can’t keep the secret anymore, said: “There are some problems with the raw materials, and there are too many orders need to be produced recently, and the manpower is insufficient…”

Upon hearing this news, Lucy was very angrily asked when they could finish the production!

The manufacturer shook his head and said: “I’m sorry, we can’t give you an accurate answer judging from the current situation, we can only guarantee that we will try to complete it on time.”

If an apology is useful, what is the use of money?

Lucy urged the factory to produce every day, and visited the factory every few days, and finally the production on time.

There are indeed many problems in the production process, mainly depending on whether the manufacturer has the responsibility and the ability to deal with the problem. As long as the manufacturer does not evade or shirk responsibility when encountering problems, it is understandable to provide timely feedback and actively deal with the problem.

As a customer, you should also master some small methods to prevent the factory from delaying delivery.

6 small ways to prevent factories from delaying delivery

1. Clear demand: make it clear that the factory knows all the details of the product before the production area, misunderstanding will lead to more time wasted.

2. Follow up: make sure your product is in production, keep in touch frequently, and let your supplies value you.

3. Friendly: make sure to maintain a good relationship with the supplier, usually the supplier won’t tell you the truth when they encounter a problem. They will be more sincere to you by maintaining a friendly relationship.

4. Reality: when following up the progress, don’t believe what they say, only what you see with your eyes is real, a video call can solve it.

5. Choice: when the order is not placed, you must choose a reliable supplier. If you choose an unreliable supplier, any effort will be useless.

6. Profit: make sure that your order allows the factory to have enough profit so that they will value your order. If the supplier does not make enough money, your project may be delayed or even worse.

Only by controlling from the source, can we reduce the effort required to follow up orders.

The manufacturer will naturally increase the time awareness and coordination if you always keep following up and maintain high requirements.

Best wishes!