Hi. Yes, country of origin is a topic popping up often here . Interesting reading. Since the conversation mostly revolved around China and Chinese knives, I think I can add a few lines on this, hoping not going too much OT .
I have been working and living in mainland China for 3 years, ending my assignment rather recently. Working with QA, I have spent most of that time on Chinese factories floors, dealing with suppliers producing consumers goods, some producing table cutlery. This, I think, is rather comparable to sporting knives production, at least when it comes to main industrial processes.
I was not short of quality issues with them ! Problem was our made in China stainless steels table cutlery oxidized and eventually rusted like - and sometimes even more than - EU made carbon steels. We run a project to fix the many claims and we identified the problems root-cause connected to three things: the raw materials, the grinding and polishing processes and the finishing process.
First thing we started to analyze and compare the steels. When managed to perform ourselves a cast analysis in a own lab, it turned out they were not exactly the same in composition, compared to EU standards (even though the standards conversion table claimed they were), and their performances were not at all to the same level. This was valid for several others raw materials I worked with, plastic for example. A Chinese made PA6 was not always having the same properties as a EU made one, even if same plastic producer run the two plants . The plastic producer themselves couldnt explain exactly why. Being not possible, for cost reasons, to import steels or change to a proprietary (with a modified composition) domestic steel, we had to work with incoming batch testing for key parameters (and restricted substances) and sort quite much. A pain in the a$$.
The second issue we discovered it was about the compounds used in the grinding and polishing processes. The factories were building the grinding and polishing wheels in-house (on the bare floors sometimes ), they didnt buy any "industrial standard grade" ones. The problem was that, in the making of polishing wheels in-house process, compounds containing sulfur, calcium oxide, iron oxide, quartz, rosin, etc. were used. Clearly, this stuff used in the grinding and polishing developed oxidation and eventually rust in the steel microgrooves. Also there was a real problem in measuring properly the agreed surface roughness which, for example, for a satin finish (in the table cutlery) we agreed on values Ra max 0.8 μm and Rz max. 8 μm and for a mirror finish Ra max 0.25 μm and Rz max 2.5 μm. There were simply no appropriate tools to measure! Or, sometimes just shortage of experienced operators to use tools. Was impossible to have a verification of agreed values.
Third issue was the quite poor finishing. This was mainly a cultural/behavioral/mind-set issue. This is not only China, to be fair . But China has it in big scale. All of us who have experienced factory floors mass production of consumers goods, can recognize that, when dealing with hundred thousands of pieces running through our hands every day, we lose a bit the idea that one piece is one Customer. We just see tons of the very same stuff . The lines need to run, they tell us and this is when speed and quantities come before quality.
First two problems were about things, it was relatively easy to tackle and solve them (hardest DMAIC phase was the C ). The third one was about People, much more difficult to get through, as usual
and this would bring me to politics/economics which Id rather not talk about. Anyway, most of the things said here about China are very true. Overall, I think that People get the Government they deserve. The good and the bad attitude/behaviors we point out in a Government its many times just the big scale reflection of the individuals very same good and bad attitude/behaviors. This said, I actually dont own any Chinese sporting knife or made in China knife yet.
Thanks for keeping count. So how is your review of your Chinese-manufactured knife coming along?
