Outsourcing Your Product Design to Your Electronic Manufacturer

The saying goes, “measure twice, cut once.” In manufacturing, we could probably apply that saying everyday and in a multitude of ways. As we literally measure and cut things every day, it’s a good standard to live by. Even when we step back from the cutting saws and lasers, that core message still holds strong meaning in electronic manufacturing. Think about what you’re doing before you actually do it.

Plan it out.

Look at the long-game before you make a permanent decision. Design thoughtfully. Don’t waste time and materials because you didn’t think it through.

For manufacturers looking to employ this mentality, design outsourcing is a great option. Multiple fresh perspectives, expertise, and built-in efficiencies in the design phase provide multiple “measurements” before your product hits the expensive production phase.

Efficiency

As an electronics manufacturer, outsourcing your design means you can select your design team with the unique needs of your product in mind. Whenever you can build in expertise, you gain access to the relevant experience and efficiency advantages that come with that expertise. Having a team of people specifically trained to do your work, and who have done it dozens of times before? That’s a huge win for your product.

Engineering

One major efficiency advantage that comes with working with experts is that an electronic contract manufacturer not only understands design process, they understand the full manufacturing process. This means your design can be guided with manufacturing in mind, eliminating potentially costly and expensive reworking or delays. A beautiful design that misses an important manufacturing requirement is no good to you.

Teamwork

With a team of experts designing your product, your own team is free to work on other projects, keeping the momentum of your business going. Instead of training and reorganizing your team to meet the specific needs of your product, they can focus on what they are good at while your design experts are busy getting you the best product design.

Further, an electronic contract manufacturer has a whole team of design engineers. So it’s not just one expert’s eyes on your work – it’s a whole group of them, each drawing on their knowledge, skills, and experience specifically geared toward your product.

Industry

Even if you’re working with the most experienced design engineer, industry expertise cannot be overrated. Experience is great, but experience directly in the same industry as your product pushes it to a new level of quality and efficiency. With an electronic contract manufacturer that specializes in your product’s industry, your design benefits from expertise specific to the product and from products across different industries.

Balance

When using an in-house team to design your product, it can be difficult to balance the number and quality of projects you need to maintain, all while accounting for payroll and overhead for each of your team members. In many cases, shifting a project design to an electronic manufacturing service give you the expertise you need without impacting the balance of work in-house or the administrative and overhead costs you would incur if you had to hire additional full-time staff.

Ideally, your team is already at capacity with projects you need to work on in-house. In that case, the addition of an outside electronic manufacturing service can improve your efficiency by helping you meet the short-term design needs of your project.

Prototyping

If your electronic manufacturing service can also offer prototyping, efficiency on your project goes up again. Your product does not need to move from place to place during the design phase and can more rapidly be adjusted during the prototyping phase.

Production

Similar to creating a seamless transition through prototyping, your electronic contract manufacturer can also offer a smooth transition to production. With this type of expertise working on your product, the move to production will already be simplified as it was designed with manufacturing in mind. But if you don’t need to transfer plans or specs and can have the product produced by the same hands that designed it, you’re pulling further inefficiencies out of the overall project. There is no need for delays when design and production can stay under the same high-quality and skilled roof.

Accountability

It’s often impractical, if not impossible to have all people, training, machinery, and infrastructure available to keep up with all the demands of your products. Quality and safety standards, regulations, and rapidly changing technology make this even more complicated. In many cases, outsourcing your design will increase your products quality and accountability by virtue of the electronic contract manufacturer’s own training and standards.

Industry Standards

Your electronic contract manufacturer knows its industry standards backward and forward and has implemented stringent training for its team in order to comply. UL and CE quality and safety standards may not be on your internal list of priorities, but they are definitely top concerns for an electronic manufacturing service. When your product is placed in their hands for design, the industry quality and safety standards go along with it.

Government Regulations

For some electronic contract manufacturers, the standards exceed even those of the consumer industries. Levison Enterprises, for example, is familiar and practiced in operating within highly-regulated industries such as defense and aerospace. This knowledge and understanding is passed along to non-government products as with any expertise, giving all projects the benefit of this higher quality standard.

Product Design at Levison Enterprises

Choosing to outsource your product should provide you with clear efficiencies and expertise advantages that result in reduced costs for you. An electronic contract manufacturer can be an invaluable support for your design process, even while choosing whether outsourcing production is the right option for your project.

Levison Enterprises always has one goal in mind – your quality product and reputation. Our company is a “measure twice, cut once” shop, with the greatest thought and care going into the planning phases of your project.

We offer in-house prototyping and manufacturing, creating an ideal location for your entire range of electronic manufacturing needs. Our team of design engineers is eager to provide you with design work that easily and efficiently transitions into its manufacturing.

We are happy to discuss whether outsourcing to Levison Enterprises is the right choice for your project.