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For this week’s Hardware Spotlight, we’re chatting with Alex Neskin, the CTO atPetcube, an innovative product that connects owners with their pets using remote wireless camera streaming, 2-way audio, and a built-in laser pointer.
Often the greatest lessons are born out of challenges encountered and Alex Neskin, CTO at Petcube, relates to this sentiment all too well.
One Saturday morning last May in Hong Kong, Alex woke to a distressed voice on the other end of the phone. When the words finally came out they began with, ‘I feel broken hearted… so very sorry..” It was a representative of the Chinese factory he had been working with who called to regretfully inform him a subcontractor of theirs had been been shut down, the workers arrested, and all their tooling molds confiscated.
This call came just days before the tooling was to be finished. So after months and months of difficult preparation and tens of thousands of dollars spent, there was nothing else to do but start over.
亚历克斯（Alex）在这次独家采访中分享了他由于这种不幸的经历而学到的教训，这有助于他在中国与制造商合作的复杂过程中浏览。
Choose Wisely
The key to choosing a factory in China all comes down to trust. Alex suggests there are three factors to consider when deciding which factories can be trusted.
1.声誉
A key factor in choosing a trusted manufacturer in China is to look at reputation. The problem, however, is that the factories with the best reputation as known and trusted partners are generally more difficult to win the attention of as a smaller startup with small production quantity. The key here, Alex says, is two-fold and similar to the principles of successful job-hunting:
- Get an introduction.You might trust the factory, but they don’t trust you yet. You need to either scrape your own network to find an introduction or seek out the help of a partner program like HAXLR8R which can facilitate introductions on your behalf. Alex found his introduction to a large factory, Yitoa, through a colleague at a large Ukrainian company called PocketBook.
- Sell yourself.介绍后，仍然有要做的工作。您必须说服工厂，即生产量较小的新产品（需要更多的研究和时间）是一项积极的投资。“我与经理交谈，并告诉他我们将在CES上大量推广我们的产品，” Alex Shalles。“此外，我强调，将来我们将拥有更多的数量，而对于他们来说，开发一种全新的产品将表明他们有能力生产新的创新产品。”
Manufacturing in China is a challenge for your body and for your mind
2.心情
选择工厂时要考虑的另一个因素是工人的心情。Alex说：“我在HAXLR8R计划期间收到的最佳建议是通过检查工厂工人使用的洗手间来评估给定工厂的心情。”“当您访问时，请询问经理是否可以使用工人的洗手间，然后在墙壁上寻找任何东西。如果清晰清洁，那么心情很可能是积极的。但是，如果墙上有写作，请注意，拍照，并要求某人翻译之后。在墙上写作可能是工厂中不满的好指标，这是一个不好的信号。”
3. Turnover
Alex also suggests to be wary of high turnover rates. One of the factories Alex worked with before Yitoa had a large number of younger people working in the factor and, thus, a very high turnover rate. So he would show up one day to explain the assembly process to a group of workers and then four days later there would be new workers making the same errors which would have to be corrected once again. Alex recommends looking for a factory just outside of the city center where the worker population is not quite as young.
Be Present
Once you’ve chosen a factory Alex says it’s critical to be present on the assembly line floor to control the process. “No one knows your product as well as you do,” Alex stresses, “so the only way to make sure the process is going smoothly is to be there on the assembly floor to make sure no errors are being made. Control everything.”
Alex发现的一个错误的一个例子是与产品外壳一起使用。有一天，亚历克斯（Alex）去工厂检查了另一家供应商刚刚运往的铝制外壳，当他手里握住它并沿着边缘滑动手指时，他的手指切成薄片。
“I asked why it was like this,” Alex recalls, “because we had designed the casing with a 0.5 mm edge so it would be safe and the vendor said he thought it was for pets so he disregarded the specific edge dimensions.”
这只是生产过程中沟通不畅的一系列问题的一个例子。评估和控制所有生产阶段的最佳方法是与制造合作伙伴亲自与工厂交流。
如果您能看到超越任何跨越路线的误解或不幸，那么您可以在另一侧看到机会
Test Everything
在将产品运送给球队的Kickstarter支持者之前，亚历克斯有一个奇怪的梦想。在梦中，在海上一艘船上的数百个petcubes陷入了暴风雨中，导致它们摇晃并最终被摧毁。
“I woke up from this dream and immediately thought, ‘I need to do a shaking test,’” Alex recalls. That same day he went to the factory and asked if a shaking test had been done. It had not. So he set one up and, low and behold, one of the mechanical parts was unstable.
从此开始，亚历克斯知道他必须主动进行有效测试和分析每个产品的组件。
Another test conducted was an aging test for which he placed the device in a fridge at a very low temperature, below -20 degrees Celsius, and also in a hot box with a temperature above 40 degrees Celsius. The device passed the cold test, but in the hot box the camera overheated and failed.
解决您的装配线问题的唯一方法是研究漏洞并逐渐纠正它们
With each problem that arose Alex halted the assembly line until a proper solution was found. “I think I stopped assembly maybe 5 or 6 times during this phase of production so we could solve problems and start again,” Alex says.
重要的是要注意，亚历克斯必须主动参加这些测试中的每一个 - 工厂经理没有代表他启动他们。亚历克斯补充说：“当您与更大的工厂合作并生产少量的工厂时，您必须负责一切。”
亚历克斯也had to work with the factory manager to test and measure the efficiency of the factory assembly line. “We divided the assembly line into three stages and at each stage measured the speed, efficiency, and number of errors,” Alex shares. “We then rearranged people accordingly to improve the efficiency of the assembly line.”
亚历克斯（Alex）具有非常周到和反思性的性质，并与隐喻说话，以描述他如何可视化完美的装配线。Alex提出：“解决装配线问题的唯一方法是研究漏洞并逐渐纠正它们。”“就像水从小溪中移动一样，您需要使流动清洁，稳定和光滑。”
保持弹性
Production may not always go according to plan. Scratch that – it will not always go according to plan. But the main takeaway for Alex is that resilience is the quality you must hold tight to in order to look past the many frustrations and complications one will inevitably encounter to get to final production.
“A certain level of positivity had to be present for me throughout this process,” Alex reflects. “Manufacturing in China is a challenge for your body and for your mind but if you can see beyond any miscommunication or misfortune that crosses your path along the way, you can see opportunity on the other side.”
