From time to time, we all need a little bit of help. As a business owner, though, you may tend to pride yourself on your independence, and have a strong desire to keep all of your processes in-house. But what if soliciting design, assembly, testing, and fulfillment services could actually help you to grow your company an enable to you bring in more cash? That would probably grab your interest, and it has, indeed, peaked the curiosity of other small to midsize electronics businesses. A growing number of companies are turning to contract manufacturing services as a means of improving their own existing business models. Could this be a viable solution for your needs? If you're on the fence, take a look at 6 of the many ways in which a contract manufacturer could help to improve the development of your electronics.
1. Knowledge & Experience
Who wouldn't love to be able to take advantage of talented industry professionals with a great deal of knowledge and experience without actually having to pay their salary? That's exactly what you get when you make the decision to work with a contract manufacturer. You'll be able to obtain design and manufacturing input from a team of experts who have been working in PCB engineering, assembly, and repair for years. This will help your own staff to learn and grow, while also enabling you to offer a superior product to your buyers.
2. Design Efficiency
One of the primary reasons that board production can get expensive is inefficient design schematics. Although your engineers may be very good at what they do, there's always room for improvement, and it's always a good idea to consider someone else's opinion as a means of looking at things from a new point of view. By taking advantage of a contract manufacturer's electronics engineering design team, you can work together to determine how to improve your design efficiency, reducing the size of boards and the number of costly components required.
3. Careful Testing
There's nothing worse than throwing away thousands upon thousands of dollars in time, labor, and parts because a design wasn't properly tested through simulations processes, or because a large batch order was assembled without first testing a prototype. Although circuit board testing can be time-consuming, it's an extremely important part of the production process. By working with a contract manufacturing company, someone else can shoulder the burden of testing for you, so that you can focus on other tasks.
4. Superior Technologies
Wouldn't it be great if you could take advantage of the same design, assembly, and production technologies as your largest competitors? While it may be easy for the "big guys" to spend money on the latest and greatest equipment, it's not always a possibility for you. When you partner with a contract manufacturing service, though, you are able to tap into these valuable resources without being required to invest in the technology, house it, or maintain it. Suddenly, you're much more competitive in the consumer marketplace!
5. Cut Material Costs
In addition to helping you improve design efficiency and reduce your spending on expensive manufacturing equipment, an experienced contract manufacturer can actually help you to scale back the cost of components and parts. Through developing long-term relationships with reliable suppliers, a contract manufacturer can get the best deals on parts, which translates to less spending for you, as well.
6. Excellent Fulfillment Services
Just because you offer a warranty on your boards and products doesn't mean that you should throw away money on replacement units when something goes wrong. When you have a contract manufacturing company on your team, you can address problems in a more cost-efficient manner. Through careful troubleshooting, your contract manufacturer can pinpoint the problem. Often, it can be traced to a single failing component which can then be replaced for a fraction of the cost to replace.
7. Highly Certified
Most electronics contract manufacturers are highly certified in their fields. Certifications such as AS9100,
DD2345 and ISO13485 demonstrate the commitment to excellence that a potential contract manufacturer has. Certifications provide a level of (objective) accountability that, first and foremost, protects you the customer. Certifications ensure that the contract manufacturer remains compliant with current industry standards, regulations, and best-practices which directly impact the quality and reliability of the products and services the electronics contract manufacturer builds.
How could a contract manufacturer help you?
