Pre-Shipment Inspections

Recently, we very often receive questions from customers on how to properly organize pre-shipment inspections. Below we consider the most common questions and answers on pre-shipment inspections.

When is it advisable to conduct pre-shipment inspections?

The practice of conducting inspections is common:

• to control the produced complex equipment, machines, systems. Here the conduct of pre-shipment inspection plays the role of «insurance». It is more favorable to pay for inspection, than later, in case of obtaining low-quality expensive and often volume order, to return goods on completion. An important factor is the loss of time, in this case, late start-up of equipment or downtime are very expensive.
• to control large batches of low-cost products (plumbing, valves, clothing, etc.). In this case, when a unit of production is inexpensive and the sales margin is not high, it is important to prevent a large number of reclamations, which will have to spend time=money to process.

When should a pre-shipment inspection take place?

Inspection can be started during the period of final tests / measurements / acceptance of the batch by the contractor, during the period when the batch or the product is in the finished product warehouse, or even completed by the control of loading into the vehicle.

What should an inspector know before starting work?

An inspector should know:

1. The maximum allowable number of defects / non-conformities in the product or the batch. For large batches of products, the ISO 2859-1 standard is most often used, which defines the approaches to the allowable limits of significant, minor non-conformities in quantitative terms, AQL (Acceptable Quality Limit).
2. In any case, the inspector should be provided with a catalog with a description and categorization of defects in order to understand what is an acceptable/unacceptable or significant/minor or critical non-confromity.
3. Content of work - a set of tests, control operations that need to be carried out.

What is most often included in the work of an inspector conducting pre-shipment inspection?

The content of the inspector’s work depends on the factors considered above: what product is inspected (here we get important criteria of product evaluation for inspection), and at what stage the inspection is carried out.

The content of the work may include:

• presence during testing, quality control;
• verification of compliance of the number of transport units (containers, boxes, cases, etc.) and their labeling with the requirements of the customer;
• quantity control;
• verification of accompanying documentation;
• visual inspection for deviations, defects;
• check of a complete set;
• monitoring the condition of the vehicle and the correctness of the loading process.

What should a pre-shipment inspection report look like?

The most important thing is that the report should contain a conclusion on the possibility/permission of the batch for shipment and/or transportation. Photographing is recommended to preserve evidence of an inspection.

On the photo - the inspector of LLC «TMS RUS» in the process of testing.

Development Department, info@tms-cs.ru
www.tms-cs.ru