When a tech company looks for a manufacturing partner to assist with specific aspects of its project, what should it be looking for? When machinists, welders, and other specialists working with technology companies seek to improve presentation and service, where should they focus?
In this article, whichever side of the equation you’re on, these are the eight traits you want to be thinking about. If you can think of more traits that should be added to the list below, please don’t hesitate to let us know in the comment section below.
Whether you’re talking about welders, machinists, fitters, machine operators, or any of the dozens of other specialties that may be relevant to the manufacture of a tech product, communication is going to be crucial to meeting expectations without excessive—and wasteful—revision, correction, and adjustment.
You may not be able to nail things down on your first stab at a project without a little more back-and-forth, especially on more custom or unusual jobs, but if both sides communicate clearly and exhaustively the end result will always be closer to what both sides want.
Companies shouldn’t have to guess what they’re paying for, what they’re getting, what’s causing delays, what extra charges are going to show up, or anything else critical to the project. A good shop doesn’t need to hide excessive charges, doesn’t remind you at the 11th hour that you didn’t pay for shipping, and doesn’t vanish for a week because something went wrong and no one wants to tell you about it.
No one wants to work with a shop that barely functions because no one is keeping to schedules, no one bothers to pick up a phone and answer questions, etc. Professionalism manifests itself in a lot of different ways, not all of which are readily visible from an outside perspective. This can make a partnership difficult for both parties; it’s difficult to identify professionalism from the outside, and difficult to present professionalism from the inside.
The best anyone can hope for is to look at the markers of professionalism and hope they’re appropriately indicative of what’s happening on the shop floor; scheduling, communication, dress, etc.
Often, what determines the value of a tech manufacturing partner isn’t so much the quality of the work done on the shop floor, but the quality of everything surrounding that work. A partner that’s easy to work with offers a lot to a beleaguered tech company. The easier it is to get logistics, payments, instructions, and other services and communication worked out
Life will always be easier when both sides have a pretty good idea of what they expect a project to look like, which means tech companies want to work with teams that have worked on similar projects in the past.
Any job involving welders and similar workers will involve a mountain of standards and compliance issues, no matter how simple. When you start adding in the question of additional standards and additional factors in compliance which may be relevant to your specific project, it becomes increasingly important that a tech manufacturing partner be comfortable maintaining compliance with a broad array of regulations and industrial standards.
If something needs to change to improve your bottom line, to resolve a problem with your product as manufactured, or for any other reason, a tech manufacturing partner needs to be able to adjust to those changes and keep working effectively and efficiently. No one wants to find out that they need to change machinists mid-project because the current shop can’t adjust to a minor change, nor do they want to simply endure inferior end results because an inflexible shop opts for ‘comfortable’ over ‘appropriate’ in tools and techniques.
A good manufacturing team can do more with less, but there will always be physical limitations to what a given team can achieve with a given set of tools. That’s why it’s crucial that welders, machinists, and other professionals be properly outfitted with the necessary tools for relevant projects.
This means that teams should be matching their equipment purchases to the jobs they want to specialize in, while tech firms looking for manufacturing teams should be asking lots of questions about the tools being used.
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels then we have a lot to choose from.
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