Choosing the Right Manufacturing Partner
Choosing the right manufacturing partner for your embedded hardware and PCB assembly services, non-ferrous plate machined products, and custom machine-building services can make or break your ability to compete.
- The right manufacturing partner can make your products faster, at lower cost, at higher quality, and with better consistency.
- The right CNC machining partner knows how to maintain dimensional consistency beyond prototyping and small batches.
- The right manufacturing partner authors their own investment in your business with a mutual multiyear contract with your quality and delivery requirements
- The right manufacturing partner should be willing to invest in more PCB assembly equipment or pick and place robotics if you are willing to commit to a long-term contract.
- The right manufacturing partner knows how to balance communication and management with hands off execution of your hardware production line.
- The right manufacturing partner grows with you and incentivizes their commitment to dollars on your bottom line.
Vertical Integration, Single Source
The ideal manufacturing partner manages every engineering discipline, design stage, and manufacturing process in house. Do not get lured by short term pricing. Do not outsource individual stages of your product design, testing, and manufacturing to multiple third parties. The ideal manufacturing partner mitigates ambiguity when you stake your revenue and reputation on a manufacturing partnership.
- Cost Control- A single source manufacturing partner leverages cross discipline knowledge to source multiple alternatives for parts without sacrificing quality. They determine cost effective substitutions and manage domestic supply lines to avoid costly bottlenecks. They mitigate costs related to defects, rework, and scope bloat.
- Quality Control- Even the most off the shelf products have custom design, manufacturing nuances, and industry specific qualities. An ideal manufacturing partner maintains institutional memory from the concept phase all the way to mass production. An ideal automation partner reviews your product specifications with every associated engineering discipline. If you need to review your manufacturing line for efficiency improvements, a vertically integrated team maximizes opportunities. Consistent processes, consistent communicators, and consistent quality yields consistent revenue.
- Timeline Control- A vertically integrated manufacturer presents a schedule Gantt from the beginning of the partnership to represent design, integration, prototyping, and scaling to mass production. They take responsibility for mitigating supply line bottlenecks. They manage maintenance downtime. They control, record, and report on manufacturing volumes. The product to market timeline of working with one company reduces the management obligation of your company when compared to a web of third party engineers and manufacturing freelancers.
Multiyear Manufacturing Contracts
The ideal manufacturing partnership begins with a multiyear manufacturing contract. Signing a multiyear contract guarantees the quality, delivery, and scalability of your product manufacturing. Choose a contract based manufacturing partner can guarantee critical assets for your business:
- Maintenance and Quality Control- A standard expectation of long term manufacturing contracts is management of maintenance. Your manufacturing partner manages quality testing. They monitor anomalies in your production and mobilize their engineering staff to correct problems. They schedule downtime when it is least disruptive to your process. They install updates and proactively seek improvements to your manufacturing process. They commit to standard operating procedures (SOP).They keep consistent points of contact to keep you informed.
- Mutual Investment- When you sign a multiyear contract with a manufacturer, you invest them in your success. Your steady stream of income incentivizes that manufacturer to maintain your product line, maintain your longevity, and improve your valuation of the partnership. Steady production means steady income, and steady income gives a contract manufacturer incentive to grow, reinvest in better equipment, and grow their business with you. Your dollars grow them to become the ideal partner as you grow. These manufacturers scale for your needs better than the general do all job shop option
- Compatible Design- A quality contract manufacturer does not just create your manufacturing line based only on one product. They strive to create scalable prototypes with similar parts and similar families of modular designs. This streamlines your production, requires you to keep less stock keeping units (SKUs), and allows for faster and more cost effective production.
- Bulk Pricing- A contract manufacturing partner gives you bulk price rates. Parts, labor, and products more expensive when purchased on an individual basis come with reduced pricing when purchased on scale. The longer you maintain your contract, the better your price. This allows you to put more dollars on your bottom line.
Reshoring Manufacturing
There are more reasons for Made in America than just Patriotism. Modern manufacturing partners focus just as strongly on safeguarding their manufacturing as they are about pure profit.
- Supply Chains- The right manufacturing partner looks locally for onshore and reshored sources for parts and components. They do not allow world events to bottleneck your manufacturing line.
- Communication- The costliest mistakes in manufacturing come out of poor communication. You save on travel, managing language gaps, regional business etiquette snafus, country specific intellectual property management. A domestic manufacturing partner automatically sidesteps those communication risks and keeps your manufacturing line in arm’s reach.
- Intellectual Property Protection- Your trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets become vulnerable to piracy and theft when you involve multiple third parties and multiple country specific regulations for enforcement. Even when you work in a country that has strong penalty enforcement for IP theft, this happens after your hard-won innovations have leaked to the public. The best intellectual property protection comes from involving one manufacturing partner. The best intellectual property protection comes from keeping every discipline in house.
Finding precision CNC manufacturing, high volume PCB assembly, or embedded hardware services on your own is a challenge you don’t have to face. Tell us more about your project, schedule a virtual meeting, or call (262)-622-6104 to learn how DEVELOP LLC can manufacture your products.