Compliance and regulation has changed so much over the years with far more stricter regulations required for retail products today than ever before.The changing landscape has meant the very nature of compliance has become rather complex and difficult to achieve without adequate knowledge and expertise.
Many of the compliance complexities that arise are in the collection and gathering of all the necessary documentation. Many manufacturers, importers and retailers today are still operating on outdated systems like spreadsheets, creating unreliable data and documentation, which creates an almost insurmountable task trying to maintain the information for each product reference.
Often times professionals find themselves in a position of begging and pleading for documentation with nowhere to turn but to wait on the slow turning wheels of doing everything manually. Data, technology and cloud-based systems and solutions are where supply chains are headed.
Today’s consumers dictate the level of safety and performance they need to make a purchase of your product; this can either be seen as a challenge for your supply chain or as a golden opportunity.
What if there was an all inclusive compliance software that could streamline all your supplier and compliance operations in one place… accurately and reliably?
In this post, we seek to uncover the Technical Compliance File (TCF) solution – A compliance solution that will help relieve many of the compliance pressures that your supply chain currently faces.
What is a TCF?
Why a TCF?
At this point you may be wondering about the exact operating of this system, and what kind of benefits a compliance solution like this can have for your current operating systems. So let me tell you;
There are a number of reasons why retailers are in preference for this solution;
- Technical expertise – There are dedicated teams to review what exact documents are required for the products and that the documents received are exactly what you are in need of, including all follow up with any supplier or factory that may be delaying you. These experts are also able to give technical advice where necessary, ensuring you don’t find yourself in a sticky supplier situation that can easily be avoided.
- Online 24/7 access – The TCF solution has a 24/7 online dashboard with real-time updates allowing
you insight into your compliance status whenever you need it. There are also progress charts allowing you actionable insight into timelines and your supplier progress. This solution is also able to store all your documents for up to 10 years, ensuring your documents are safely stored for any future reference.
- Transparency – A solution like this can provide you with a real look into your supplier and/or manufacturer’s status in the workplace. It provides invaluable insights into the kind of supplier you have chosen to work with as you can track their compliance and regulatory progress online.
- Visibility – This allows you insight into what tests are being done and achieved in the lab, placing you in a better position of understanding the level of compliance your products are achieving.
- Additional custom services – In having the expertise to analyze and determine the exact compliance and regulatory documents you are in need of, there are other custom services that can be offered if you find yourself short of an audit or specific product test that you need done to form a part of your TCF.
- Separate supplier reporting – You are able to access reports on your organizational progress, but also your supplier’s progress. Your supplier is given access to a separate dashboard, so your information remains confidential.
- Cost reduction – Streamlining the incredibly complex compliance process into one solution will be cost effective for your brand. Let me break this down for you; As mentioned earlier, a TCF is required as part of regulation, you already know what the process is in collecting documents from your factory, and all the follow-up communication that is required to get your documents. It’s often difficult and complex with little or slow results.
Regarding product compliance, let’s say for a furniture retailer, each item may need up to 30 documents (without counting all the submitted and rejected docs, which can be even more) to demonstrate compliance just for that product. As a retailer, you likely have more than 1 item that needs to achieve compliance, and with every document that is needed, each could take up to 30 minutes to evaluate properly, which equates to about 15 hours for just one product! If you have a whole range of products, you can begin to see how costly this whole process can become.
Risk Mitigation – The insight that this solution can provide into the most vulnerable areas of your supply chain can be invaluable information. The information that you will have access to should alert you to potential risks early on, allowing you the time to mitigate those potential risks.
Enhancing your current quality management systems to include a web-based solution like this can set your brand at a benchmark above the rest.
As supply chains are increasingly becoming more digitally adaptive with cloud-based operating systems, it will be necessary for you to analyze your current solutions to be more adaptive to the current supply chain climate.
A comprehensive solution like this can create an operational efficiency for your supply chain that may have never even crossed your path. The benefits and increased visibility into your supply chain will be invaluable to optimizing your current quality systems.
In a better place of understanding this web-based solution, do you have thoughts or questions regarding the TCF? Leave your questions in the comments section; I would love to engage with you on this.
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Both of these retailers experienced significant challenges within their supply chains, one had even previously adopted the services of a 3rd party QA provider, who made no strides in overcoming their challenges with them.
The quality of a product can be defined in many ways and is almost always dependent on your specific consumer and their definition of quality for your specific item. So in that light, you will need to know exactly what your consumer is looking for to create the quality your brand is looking to achieve.
When a consumer sets out to look for a quality product, they want to feel as though they have paid less than what the actual product is worth, the quality of the product far surpassing the amount they ended up paying. Fulfilling the need to exceed the consumer’s expectations, this is what true quality is all about.
If fulfilling the need to meet your consumer’s expectations is at the top of your company’s agenda, is it not essential for your brand’s products to meet a level of quality that does just that? Let me leave you pondering that for a bit.
In attempting to understand your customer’s definition of quality, it will be important to note that fulfilling consumer expectation and experience forms a part of that definition.
Let me give you an example; If a consumer orders a product that has met and passed all quality tests it needed to meet, that product for all intents and purposes is a quality item. But, if the order arrives later than promised or arrives with a missing screw or the incorrect color, the consumer may not define this product as an item of value and quality.
Striving for product quality is a stems right from the raw materials used, to the way in which it arrives to your customer, therefore every step needs to be taken into consideration.
craze of fidget spinners and, where 200, 000 of these spinners have been recalled due to it 
they want to know where its raw materials were sourced, how it was made, who made it and what its level of quality is. They ask themselves whether or not your product will be an investment in their lives.
The key here will be to know your target market, know your consumer. If you do not know what they want, you will struggle to be their go-to brand; you will lose out on their brand evangelism and praise affecting your bottom line
“Is this the type of brand and product you wish to create?”
Retailers today are under so much pressure with the current supply and demand of products, that quality and/or compliance is not always a priority.
“But, it should be!”
Bad quality and non-compliance both mean that your brand is at an unnecessarily high risk with regards to meeting regulations and your reputation. It will be worth all the hard yards that you put in from the creation and design to the manufacturing and distribution of your products. This will help mitigate unnecessary risk, saving you money and precious time.
A POA is essential for filling out shippers exportation documents. This exportation document cannot be completed without a valid POA. Without it, your shipment will not be released, costing you time and money.
“So, what happens when one of these documents are not in order?”
You incur costs that begin adding up on a daily basis. Your shipment will be warehoused, where you will be billed for every day your shipment is there. It will be time consuming. Much of the paperwork mentioned above takes time to complete, but now you will be waiting on paperwork while raking up warehouse fees. This is not an ideal situation but can be avoided with thorough, well-kept, organized paperwork and a dash of patience to go along with it.
will provide an easier platform to discuss these matters in-depth, with absolute understanding and clarity. Personally I find Zoom a favorite for all conference calling, it has helped me stay in touch with a lot more ease than just relying on email.
Now that we have spoken about the means of communication, we need to address the frequency and manner of communication.
“How often do you phone your supplier to just talk about basic business operations?”
The more constant the flow of communication is, the more you will begin to get to know your supplier, and where your business sits in the grander scheme of their operations (and how much they stand to lose if they make mistakes).
This level of trust that you begin to build with your supplier will help to keep them honest and accountable if you happen to receive a delivery of products that are non compliant.
This kind of communication provides clarity and indicates to your supplier that you trust them to fix the problem to achieve the level of compliance that your company has set as the standard.
importers that do not pay on time so as to avoid those kinds of risks for themselves in the future.
What is advisable with regards to payment is ensuring that you have laid out all your payment terms with your supplier. In doing this you create a level of transparency with your supplier which can prove to be invaluable.
If you have been in this position before, as I am sure you have, I would say that the best practice here would be the same as tip #1;
Communication
You need to communicate your situation immediately, creating an honest and open relationship with your supplier which will put you in good stead for future orders.
This knowledge creates an improvement in their service to you as operational times and 
To minimise the possibility of heavy metal migration in toy manufacturing, the EU has tightened the regulations of toy quality control. Testing according to the revised EN71-3 standard includes 19 elements and the migration limits have been revised. The update has divided toys into three categories:
As a quality manager who is responsible for producing toys you know that where quality is concerned the stakes are sky-high.
You need to know that toys adhere to the demands of every test they might face when being exported globally to markets with different demands.
At API, our quality inspectors and laboratories follow a comprehensive set of 8 toy quality testing steps (built through decades of experience) that helps quality managers effectively manage quality right from the outset.
This article will take a brief look at 
Raw material quality control is paramount in helping to prevent product failure and ensuring a consistent level of quality that you and your customers expect.
Making sure that players in your supply chain are continuously subjected to testing of raw materials being used in your toy production, or when they decide to switch suppliers, verifies that the materials are at the level of quality you’re paying for and that no toxic elements such as lead and cadmium finding their way into your finished product.
Complying with chemical restrictions in raw materials laid out by the EU and US chemical content regulations such as REACH, 
through human labour.
