Increase Manufacturing Production Capacity
Increasing your production capacity should be a goal of every company. More production capacity means you can handle more customers, which means more profit. There are many ways that you can do this.
If you are a new startup or even an experienced business owner, the following tips may help you.
Review your Internal Processes
Taking a deep look at how your products are made can help you find out how to improve the processes that produce them. You can ask your employees for ideas they may have. Not only can they surprise you with what they come up with, you’ll make them feel heard and appreciated.
An example of improving a production process would be to see how many operations it takes to machine a product. Is there any way to combine operations? Can you use a 5-axis mill to machine multiple sides or angles instead of one or two at a time?
Machine Downtime
Minimizing machine downtime will also increase your production capacity. You can do this through proper machine maintenance and care.
Employee Overtime
You can ask your employees to work overtime. This is usually a costly solution though, and isn’t sustainable in the long run. Typically companies will only ask employees to work overtime if they are behind on schedules or are understaffed.
Although these methods to improve your production capacity are useful, there is a limit to how much they can help. You can only reduce your machine downtime by so much or run overtime shifts for a period of time before the ROI drops off.
Reaching Production Limits & Scaling Manufacturing Options
Let’s say that you are a manufacturer that has maximized on improving these processes already, what are your options?
Well, at that point you’re pretty much limited to launching a new location of production or outsourcing.
Creating a new manufacturing plant is great if you can do it, but not every company or business owner can or wants to. It takes a lot of capital, will take more time and effort to manage several locations. Sometimes it’s just not feasible if you are only looking to scale a few products.
Outsourcing can be a great way to get help you scale your production capacity. Sometimes it’s even more cost effective to outsource a product than it is to produce it in house.
Navigating Outsourcing Successfully
It can be a lot of work to outsource too. Not everyone has the time, money, or desire to go visit factories overseas while someone else holds down the day to day business operations. At the same time, you won’t really know who you are dealing with unless you have someone working directly with the factory. The companies you see online could be legitimate factories, or it could be a company that’s ill equipped to handle your product, or potentially a scammer even.
It’s crucial to work with people you trust. This is why we have our partner companies in China work directly with the factory, making sure that they can meet our customers’ standards, negotiate prices, ensure quality control and help arrange shipping. We work with startups as well as seasoned companies and we are there every step of the way to make sourcing easy and simple.
Contact us if you’re looking for help scaling your manufacturing today!