On that issue, Trey Cannon (Klipsch Audio Technologies Associate Engineer) posted this on the Klipsch Forum:
To give you an idea of our QC in China, Andre has be there for the better part of 3 months. Making sure things are working the way he wants on a new line he has comming out. We have a staff of 15 or so Engineers that are from China and spend their days at the vendors looking over their sholder. We test most of the incomming parts to the final vendor and 100 % of all finished goods are tested to our Eng. standards. We set up the rules for the test. We go over there to make sure these rules are understood and used. We spot check incomming products when they reach the US. In Eng. we test samples of each production run as they come through the lab. Over all, (ie all Klipsch products) have a less than 3% return rate. Of that 3%, 75 % are found to have no problem. Thus, over all, we have less than 1% of "bad" product ship to the end user. We sale $150,000,000 in product each year. We share as much or more info on how we do things with our end user than most anyother MFG. out there, no matter what they make. We step up and fix all problems as they arise. We look for vendors that care for their workers. Doing things like paying over time, time off, health care. After my trip to China, I call many of them my friend. What more could we do?
These days, moving to China is usually a matter of corporate survival. As long as the parent company continues to maintain its own standards, then that's fine.
