My blog focuses on Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Starting a business can be tricky and there can be some luck involved. There some keys to success though. The following contributed post is entitled, 3 Things Every Manufacturing Startup Needs To Get Right.
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When you’re a manufacturer that’s new on the block, there’s a lot you need to prove. Mainly, that you’re capable of taking on purchase orders in their bulk, and still delivering according to the client’s exact specifications.
It’s all about streamlining your processes, and that takes time to pull off properly. That’s not an easy thing to manage at your current stage, but it’s something you can excel at when you get the three things below just right.
As such, take a look through if you’re a new manufacturer in need of some advice right now.
An Acceptable Delivery Timeframe
How long does it take you to complete a purchase order? This is the kind of issue that holds every manufacturing startup back at some point, and you could well lose a client or two because of it. While this is common and is part of the process, it’s not something you should allow to continue past the first couple of months of operation.
Instead, you need to work on creating an acceptable delivery timeframe. Firstly, ensure your clients know how long work is going to take, and try to deliver to this window each and every time.
While you may be tempted to indicate shorter fulfilment stages than in reality, it’s sometimes a good idea to do the opposite. Give yourself some wiggle room, and if you can deliver before the ‘due date’, you’re more likely to hit your actual target.
Quality Equipment and Control
What are you working with within your manufacturing startup? It should be the highest quality you’re able to budget for right now, to ensure you’re not compromising on effective processes at the client level.
This also means ensuring the smaller details are well invested in too. Working with custom metal stamping companies will guarantee both your machines and cables are held together by durable pieces that fit properly and really work. That’ll reduce downtime, which can be a big problem in the early manufacturing stages.
You should also look at the way your team interacts when on the manufacturing floor, to identify things like traffic flow issues, or safety hazards you hadn’t seen before.
A Supply Chain That Works
This may be obvious from the get go, but so few manufacturing startups tend to get this right. When it comes to impressing customers and managanging fulfilment in a way that ensures you’re the right choice in their eyes, you’re only as good as the supply chain you make up.
That means you need to work with a supplier that offers the same kind of quality you do. To ensure that, you need to research your potential partners, make sure you read over contracts, and don’t be afraid to change where you source your materials if the relationship is no longer working out for you.
If you’re a manufacturing startup, the three things above are goals to hit each and every time. Make sure you’re considering them in your own workflow.
