One of the questions that customers have when they are in need of PCBs for their electronic equipment manufacturing company is whether they should source the PCBs locally or approach a China PCB manufacturer. When it comes to outsourcing the PCBs needs to China is one of the most commonly used sourcing strategies. At the same time, customers have their own concerns when outsourcing their requirements to China.
You need to first understand the areas that could turn out to be complicated when outsourcing your PCB requirements to China. When you know the areas where tings could go wrong, it is much easier to deal with them. You would be better prepared to deal with them or at least avoid totally this strategy if you think that you do not want to go through all these challenges.
If you should decide to source your PCBs from a local PCB manufacturer it does not mean that there will be absolutely no issues. In fact, there are a number of issues that could be common to both local sourcing and sourcing from China. For example, the quality of the PCB could be an issue regardless of whether it is sourced locally or from China. So, the location of the PCB manufacturer is not a factor that decides the quality of the PCBs. Secondly the turnaround time is not decided by the location. Of course, there will be variation with the shipping time but the production time is not decided by the location of the PCB manufacturer. Further to that, the quality of the customer support again is not decided by the location of your PCB supplier.
As you could see, that if you have been staying away from a China PCB manufacturer thinking that these could be areas of issues, then you should know that these issues could emerge even when if you go to a local supplier. Then what is the actual issue and where could the problems be if at all any.
One of the areas that customers that outsource to China experience is the language issue. The PCB manufacturer may not have good English-speaking staff that could interact with you and you may not know Chinese to deal with the company. If there is a language limitation then the manufacturer may not understand your requirements fully. In this case, you need to first identify companies with good English-speaking capabilities and then apply all the other regular selection criteria that you would apply regardless of whether it is a local supplier or a company that is located elsewhere.
Another issue could be in establishing the genuineness of the manufacturer. Does the manufacturer really have their own manufacturing unit or is it just a mediator that poses to be a manufacturer? You need to do your groundwork well before you select your suppliers. When you understand these dynamics, you would know that it is not as complicated as you think to work with a China PCB manufacturer.
