Contract manufacturing offers highly skilled workers, leveraging their knowledge and experience to quickly and efficiently grow your business. Contract manufacturers offer three major benefits to businesses: large resources of knowledge, offloading work (increased workloads or non-core competencies),and cost savings (material/wages).
The first step to choosing a contract manufacturer is trust. You will be working closely together, sharing a plethora of information that may be sensitive and you'll want to have a seamless working relationship. Without trust and a good working relationship contract manufacturing can hurt more than help.
A variety of skills are available to the contracting company to leverage. Some skills and resources offered by P1 Technologies are formal engineering models/drawings, specialized machinery, knowledge of standards, knowledge of industry, knowledge of markets, material sourcing, trained operators, trained technicians, trained machinists, and various manufacturing support. Companies can use contract manufacturing skills and resources to get a product to market faster and more robustly. A contract manufacturer will have a large resource of knowledge due to the wide range of activities requested by their wide range of customers. For example, P1 Technologies is asked to perform a variety of operations and can easily cross reference, modify, and adjust to give a nearly fully optimized solution based on our experience dealing with similar processes. Most companies only have limited experience in manufacturing and would prefer to focus on their core competencies.
Core competencies are characteristics of your company that make it uniquely competitive in its current and potential future markets. Companies who know their core competencies will effectively know how to offload increased workloads and/or reduce labor associated with inefficient/insignificant company overheads. A contract manufacturer can take the areas of lesser competitive significance and produce a reliable product at a reasonable price; allowing a company to direct effort in areas of greater market significance. A warning though; the previous statement is only valid with a contract manufacturer possessing good communication, quality production, and intellectual property integrity. Another scenario for a company to choose a contract manufacturer is when resources available to bring a product to market are limited. The company requesting service may be too small or unable to train enough employees in the time required to produce at the volume needed to satisfy their customers. This scenario may require a business to share some of its core competencies and partner for the benefit of meeting the market need in the time required. Again the statement above requires a contract manufacturer to have a good working relationship with their customers. Here at P1 Technologies, we have experience in bringing products to market and balancing workloads to benefit our customers.
The company’s bottom line will always play a factor in the decision-making process. It can't be the only deciding factor, but it will always be a powerful one. A contract manufacturer can leverage its large volume buying power to offer lower prices if the service being requested is one of its areas of focus. The area of focus can allow a company to select from components already stocked at the contractor’s facility. Potentially what is offered will be better than what is requested or offer insight into a better solution. P1Technologies has thousands of raw and assembled components like wires, contacts, plastics, connectors, pins, packaging materials, and many others. Contract manufacturers are also trained and focused on optimizing material, labor, and equipment costs to keep prices competitive. At P1 Technologies we rely on time studies and lean principles to keep costs low. A good working relationship with a trustworthy contract manufacturer will allow you to keep costs low and quality high.
A contract manufacturer can save you time and money while producing a quality product that surpasses your company’s ability and allows you to focus on markets of greatest interest to your core competencies. P1Technologies is an ISO 13485, 9001 contract manufacturer and has been in business since 1949. We have worked with our customers and their products from all over the world. We have experience in mitigating risk and optimizing a customer's design cycle. We would be happy to provide you with any assistance in cabling, injection molding, clean room assembly, or labeling.
