Countries of Origin
Countries of Origin
(OP)
I work in the pressure vessel fabrication industry in North America, and I constantly see customer specifications that specifically disallow materials from China and the Czech Republic (I don't want to get into right/wrong here, these are customer specs for which I have not power over).
I have some familiarity with the justifications our customers use for excluding Chinese materials (track record...), but I've never understood why the Czech Republic is specifically mentioned.
Does anyone know why Czech materials are often specifically disallowed in customer specs? Is there some ugly history of material quality?
Cheers,
Marty
I have some familiarity with the justifications our customers use for excluding Chinese materials (track record...), but I've never understood why the Czech Republic is specifically mentioned.
Does anyone know why Czech materials are often specifically disallowed in customer specs? Is there some ugly history of material quality?
Cheers,
Marty





RE: Countries of Origin
RE: Countries of Origin
If material meets the specification requirements, it should be acceptable regardless of its origin.
If the material does not meet the requirements, likewise, it shouldn't matter where it came from.
Now, if you are buying material from suppliers you do not trust or where you have no recourse if you find the material defective, well, that is a purchasing issue and not an issue with the country of origin.
But, saying no material from China or the Czech Republic in the absence of legal justification is really no different than saying no material from African-American owned or Jewish owned businesses.
rp
RE: Countries of Origin
Thank you for your information regarding audits. Unfortunately with our current project, this is a company-wide spec and the individuals we are working with are not aware of the background to the statement.
redpicker,
Those are all fair comments. I guess I'm just wondering if there were any catastrophic historical accidents that have spooked people into blanket excluding the Czech Republic.
Thanks,
RE: Countries of Origin
It is like students go to West European countries and we rarely hear any one going to these countries, though in my times learning Russian language was a plus !!
I'm just one step away from being rich, all I need now is money.
( read somewhere on the internet)
RE: Countries of Origin
RE: Countries of Origin
RE: Countries of Origin
This is usually no China or India, and this is based on experience with mis-marked items from these countries.
There is some logic behind this for fabricated items since they often change hands many times in processing.
When it comes to material (plate or bar) it does not make sense. It would be more effective to simply require the fabricator to audit the source, that is from the melt onward. Then they could use any supplier that they wanted to but they would have to prove the supply chain.
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Plymouth Tube
RE: Countries of Origin
Mandating no Chinese material entirely is not only unfair to the nonfraudulent manufacturers in China, of which there are many, it's also totally impractical. Unless you're special ordering a mill-run quantity, you need to buy what people keep on the shelf, and in many cases that's Chinese material because of cost.
We've had no track record of fraudulent mill certs from Eastern European countries, India or Taiwan- only mainland China. These countries have functioning civil court systems. Our experience with Indian material has been excellent so far.
RE: Countries of Origin
We procure directly from the producing mills, no distributors allowed.
We audit the mills regularly and witness production runs periodically.
We visited 13 mills in that part of the world to find 2 suppliers.
We did not find mills acting fraudulent, but rather they either don't understand the actual intent of the specifications are are lax in enforcing the details.
The local distributors in that region are the ones that I don't trust.
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Plymouth Tube
RE: Countries of Origin
As a smaller fabricator, it is difficult for us to justify travelling around the world to perform audits, and we rarely purchase enough material to justify mill runs.
On that basis, the costs normally wouldn't justify opening a can of worms trying to get exclusions from long-standing customer specifications. Also we often find there are enough other sources that still meet the customer specs. Regardless we still perform a receiving inspection on all materials.
Thanks everyone!
RE: Countries of Origin
Regards,
Mike
RE: Countries of Origin
This may be irrelevant, but the heightened level of mechanical failure in commercial airlines may put extra spotlight on the issue of material origin.
RE: Countries of Origin
As a supplier, if you are excluded, there may be a sound reason or no reason what so ever that I have elected to exclude you as a supplier.
Best regards - Al
RE: Countries of Origin
Despite this, we have had issues- with seamless tubing (tubing being something you know well!)- and they were forced to stand behind the crap they sold us. In that case, it was Chinese origin seamless tubing in 316/L SS which looked perfect everywhere you could see from the outside and which had a lovely mill cert, but which was severely contaminated and/or corroded in the bore, the closer you got to the middle of each length. If we buy Chinese seamless tubing in future, which is doubtful due to that experience, we will need to cut a representative number of lengths mid-length and inspect the bores prior to acceptance- because that's something the distributor just isn't going to do for us.
gtaw is correct that the customer of anything has every right to exclude any vendor for whatever reason they see fit. They are under no obligation to accept the lowest bid proposal, or any proposal for that matter. They can select or exclude based on any criteria they see fit, fair or unfair. It's a different matter for public tenders.
The process of buying something, just like the process of hiring someone, is fundamentally discriminatory, i.e. you are discriminating between vendors or products or candidates to buy or hire the one you want. The key is to ensure that this discrimination is made on bases that actually matter to quality or performance, rather than on bases which are easier to quantify but which have little to no real bearing on quality or performance. Doing the latter isn't just wrong from a moral perspective, it's also a bad business decision.
Many people use brand name or country of origin as a proxy for a proper quality inspection system. A better system is an approved manufacturer's list, where mfgs of a particular product are vetted against certain quality criteria before they go on the list- and the criteria are established such that new vendors can be put on the list if they meet the required standards.
RE: Countries of Origin
We do buy hollows (both alloy steel and SS) in China for redraw here in the US. We check chemistry, redraw and anneal multiple times, and perform all lab testing and NDT in our facilities.
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Plymouth Tube