You product design is ready to go. You’ve gone through a series of prototypes over an extended development program, tested form, fit, function, software, thermal, environmental, emissions and got regulatory approvals after short-run manufacturing. Now it’s time to scale up to mid or large scale manufacturing. We can help you get there.
Manufacturing at mid to large volumes is significantly different from small scale product runs. For one thing, errors can be costly simply due to scale. In addition to this, you need to be aware of supply pipeline issues in order to ensure you are able to feed the manufacturing process with parts and assemblies. There’s nothing worse than having your entire production held back due to one or a few components hitting long lead times.
This is one aspect of scaling-up manufacturing that many who have not been exposed to the differences might miss. If one isn’t careful it is all too easy to lock-up massive amounts of capital in component inventory that is waiting for long-lead items to arrive before manufacturing can begin. Being aware of supply issues is, perhaps, one of the key factors in successfully manufacturing at scale. Of course, this also propagates backwards to design-time decisions. We have experienced instances of having components with lead times in the range of 18 to 20 weeks and allocation issues. Being aware of these realities design engineers are able to navigate around potentially problematic components in order to smooth out manufacturing flow.
Planning for manufacturing at scale also requires understanding and setting-up testing and quality control systems and procedures. From custom-designed testing systems to automated optical inspection and functional verification, everything done during manufacturing in order to reduce field failures has a multiplicative effect on the bottom line. The easiest way to loose money when designing and manufacturing a product is to not devote the time, expertise and resources necessary to ensure quality and reliability.
This is yet another area where design-time decisions can be critical. Our engineers will typically include elements into a design intended to improve manufacturing quality, facilitate testing and help insure reliability.
We would like to help you design your product from the idea stage all the way through manufacturing. If you already have a design or a prototype and just need help scaling up manufacturing, that’s OK, we can help you just as well. Our network includes manufacturing channels in the US and China. We can help you navigate all options and choose what might work best for your particular circumstances.
Please get in touch, we can help.