Router Table Depot Blog: Reader's Response, Woodworking Routers Router Table Depot

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

This is a pretty good response from one of our readers, good enough to post it and give a little credit. I would imagine that the response is from the article section and free report we give out regarding woodworking routers for router tables.

I would like to respond to your message in regard to purchasing routers, or anything for that matter, that are made in Asia; especially China.

To begin, I am a retired Quality Assurance Engineer with over 40 years in this discipline. I've been involved with building and testing the lunar module that was part of the Apollo program and after that on space electronics hardware that had quality and reliability requirements that required the equipment to work 24 hours a day for up to 14 years through very harsh environments.

I have noticed in recent times that most all power tools are now made in China, including Porter Cable. For years P-C has been considered the benchmark of tools and they earned their reputation by building good product using the best parts, materials, and processes. Now if they had elected to move their manufacturing facility from one state to another, this would not concern me. More than likely, key personnel would transfer to the new facility and their would be little or no loss in product quality. However, they chose to transfer to China. Now, I'm sure they sent key personnel to China to oversee the setup, but did they remain there. That's a big question. If, like many companies, they turned over the operation to Chinese personnel, then we consumers are now left to accept Chinese personnel to manufacture the products. Can a company in the USA be assured that all parts, materials, and processes are of the same standard as those produced in the USA. Sure, the company can inspect product as it arrives into the USA and it can "look" ok, but will it hold up over time. Who can tell? One thing I've learned over the year is that the farther away a vendor is, the less control you have. It just becomes too taxing to spend all that time and money travelling, inspecting, and auditing the processes. My feeling is that buying goods manufactured in 3rd world countries is risky business and remember, the corporate heads are in the business of maximizing profits.

One final point. Do your remember the toys that Mattel imported from China that were painted with leaded paint? It seems that the vendor ran out of paint and as Christmas was coming and timely deliveries were crucial, a procurement manager in China found an alternative supplier who could deliver the paint and enable the vendor to deliver on time. Of course, he neglected to specify that the paint contain no lead or if he did, there was no plan in place to qualify this vendor or inspect his product before accepting it. Meanwhile, Mattel, back in the USA, had no idea of what was happening. This is a classic example of losing control of a product because of a vendor being in a far off land.

I hate to pick on China, but they appear to be much like Japan in the 50's and 60's.

Thanks Marc

by: Router Table Depot

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