Industrial Park/Factory Tour Contd.

The FiiO rep then got permission for us to see the manufacturing center housed in a separate building, and we had to now put on clothing and a hat to prevent contaminants, especially dust, from entering the otherwise clean manufacturing area. There's also an anti-static grounding rod to touch before we could enter the business end of the giant 8000 m² area that currently houses four bidirectional assembly lines capable of producing up to 2 million units annually. FiiO told us there is expansion room to have another 2 million units produced as needed. There were three in use the day we were visiting, and we saw people working together to make the D03K "Taishan" DAC designed for home theaters.


Another was busy making the M15s digital audio player, which is what I personally use too. It was cool to see the various components coming together, including the PCB and the screen that were previously assembled, with multiple testing stages during the assembly process too. I also saw the FiiO K11 and K11 R2R DAC/amp units being made in some stages, which seem to be extremely popular globally based on what I saw later.


There are smaller rooms to house dedicated maintenance and engineering departments for the manufacturing center, allowing for quick diagnosis of faulty parts and ensuring continuous quality assurance and control. These rooms were further filled with expensive equipment such as power supply and battery reliability testers, as well as Audio Precision APx555 analyzers. A separate area has an RF testing chamber, and yet another houses an over-the-air anechoic chamber. There are also several rooms across the buildings to test the IEMs, headphones, and speakers once assembled, with FiiO owning a Brüel & Kjær Type 4128-C Head and Torso Simulator (HATS) that I sadly did not get to see, because it was in use in a closed session. I did ask them about the newer 5128, with FiiO saying they are looking into adopting one based on their requirements.


Once the products are assembled, they go down a large elevator to the first floor and into the adjacent building that is used for packaging and shipping, in addition to being a warehouse for products ready to go. Here too there are multiple packaging lines, and the timing with a break after the manufacturing center visit worked out great as I saw some of those same K11 R-2R DAC/amps from earlier being put together. This included visual inspection, one last check to make sure the units are turning on, and then being placed in the product box with the accessories for retail packaging. The boxes are then handed over to a 3-member team that operates a heatshrink machine, thus sealing the box in plastic, before they get put in larger shipping boxes and loaded on to pallets as applicable.


A separate section of this building has some FiiO employees handling all the orders, be it from direct consumers or authorized retailers/distributors alike. The orders are then processed with the items marked and then stored on separate shelves, ready to be picked up by shipping couriers. Based on the product order history, FiiO also has multiple products ready to go, with the building having a storage/warehouse section too. It was cool to see the K11 R-2R go from assembly to packaging to being ready for shipment, especially since one such unit had arrived recently at my door where I unboxed it as part of the review process.