On March 20th, 2016, I got an inquiry From a US customer for the plastic injection molding of an Automobile connector. We have quoted the tooling and 5000 pcs injection molding parts to them. The customer accepted the price but they need some time to audit our company.
They were asking t a lot of questions about the Automobile parts experience; I also filled a lot of supplier audit forms. ISO9001/TS16949 was requested by them as well. They spent half a year investigating our company ability. Our engineer team and I were very patient to answer all the questions they had.
But after every investigation and audit was passed at end of the 2016. They still have not released orders to us. I was followed every month, but no reply from the customer side. April of 2017 I had to receive an e-mail from customer side they told they decided to visit our factory in June. I was very excited when received this mail as it was been half year no news from this customer. They spent 1 week auditing our factory in June. Finally, they were happy with our company process and quality.
On June 15th, 2017, I received a tooling PO from this client. it took almost 3 months to follow this customer, finally, I got a PO from them. As these are Automobile parts after samples are ready it was taking one and half years to confirm the samples, During this 1.5 years we have sent 6 times samples to them for confirmation. Finally, we got approval for the end of the sample of 2018.
On Jan 17th, 2019, I got the production PO from this customer. It was taking us 3 years to got this project successful. But it was worth this is what we need to do for our clients. We also believe suppliers and clients always need to do win-win business relationships.
Up to now, the client has placed backorders and is quite satisfied with our quality and plan to have a long-term forecast with us for 10 years production contract signed.