Quote from: Simon Barber on August 10, 2013, 06:00:45 AM

Yes - production and fulfillment are outsourced - design partly in house and partly outsourced. These days there are many professional companies who specialize in these areas, ISO9001 certified, etc. No need to keep these in house.

Heh, heh, good luck with that, unless you're commanding better than 10% of their current business, expect to get low priority. If they get over 40-50% off a major multinational who gives them a "preferred partner" attaboy to hang in the lobby, expect to get really screwed. If you want to get royal treatment, look for small shops who see you as a lifeline.

ISO 9001 is practically only a documentation standard, where management attempts to shift blame for poor materials and inadequate equipment to production ops by forcing them to sign everything off. Well it can work like that. I don't put any particular store in it... basically when they deliver 50,000 wrong parts, it shortcuts the scapegoat finding process.