In our last article this month on Hong Kong we look at one of our successful inspections of a Hong Kong export manufactured in China.
Hong Kong being the re-exporting capital of the world is also one of the biggest exporters of Electrical and Electronic Equipment, which was valued at $265.47 billion in 2021 to China. The biggest re-export from China to Hong Kong is Integrated Circuits, which was valued at $68.2 billion in 2021.
Our client is a high performance fixed wireless antenna manufacturer. They were looking for pre-shipment inspections of their new integrated circuits designed in Hong Kong - manufactured in China and then re-exported from Hong Kong.
The new design of the integrated circuits needed to be safe from Physical Damage: ICs can be damaged by excess temperature, excess current or voltage, ionizing radiation, mechanical shock, stress or impact, and many other causes, and Corrosion: Humidity and aggressive chemicals can cause corrosion of the packaging materials and leads, potentially breaking them and damaging the inside parts, leading to electrical failure.
The wireless antenna manufacturer had designed a new shock resistant sealing case and needed the new integrated circuits to match the exact dimensions of the case. The fastening points for the shock absorbing, and the sealing joints that were designed to allow electric cables to pass trough needed exact dimensions as the components were manufactured across the globe from each other. This necessitated the use of a 3rd-Party inspector to verify the final sample received from the design company, in mainland China for manufacturing. Our client also requested Incoming materials Inspections of the manufacturer.
The inspection of raw materials before they are used in manufacturing is often referred to as Incoming Materials Inspection or Pre-Production Inspection (PPI).
Our client needed this quality control measure for their integrated circuit manufacturing as each component needed to accommodate the lifespan warranty of 10 years that the antenna manufacturer promotes on their marine antennas, and had therefore needed to be of the best quality, this included the wiring dimensions and the grade of silicon used in production.
Our client booked the sample and PPI inspection from Inspexion at the same time as the finalization of the integrated circuit design, got quotesand the inspection happened on the day of the arrival of the sample at the factory. The client received the report within 24 hours of the inspection. After approval of the inspection report the manufacturing was given the go-ahead.