Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Unless you have a lot of experience in designing products for manufacture, you will
probably have a number of conversations with the prospective manufacturers to clarify
your needs. They will most likely have suggestions for making your product easier to
manufacture. This is a good opportunity to further differentiate the capabilities of the vari-
ous factories that you are considering. Whether you choose a factory based on price, cap-
ability, or any number of other factors that have been discussed here, your main goal is to
minimize the risk of production problems at a reasonable price, and to get your parts after
a predictable length of time. At this point, you should have a good feeling about the best
choice of manufacturer. If not, don't worry. Pick the factory that has the best combination
of evaluation results and cost, and start working with it.
Stay away from the outliers in your evaluation. As with most things, prices that are too
good to be true probably are. Either the factory will make poor-quality parts for you or it
misquoted the price and will demand more money once it has your business. I had a bat-
tery manufacturer offer me prices that were more than 50% lower than the prices offered
by all the other vendors I received quotes from. As an experiment, I requested samples
from the company. Six months and countless emails after I sent money to the manufac-
turer, it sent the wrong parts and disappeared.
Keep in mind that even very good factories will make honest mistakes. What the fact-
ory does to correct each mistake is a good indicator of whether it will make a good long-
term manufacturing partner. If the factory is exceedingly slow, is unresponsive to your
corrections, demands payments to correct errors, or just points the blame at you (even if it
was your error), then it might be time to move on to a manufacturer with better customer
service and better problem-solving skills.
If things don't go as planned, that's not great, but it's survivable. You have now made a
list of potential factories, and have a process to find more if necessary.
Prior to beginning a volume production run of any product, it's a good idea to work
with the factory to optimize your product for its production capabilities. Not only does
this step reduce the cost of the product, but it will increase the chances that your product
can be made successfully at the volumes you desire with the lead times that you've agreed
upon.
