After you have developed your product and you are ready for production, you may be considering your options. When comparing prices, you might have realized that offshore manufacturing could be a viable option. You might be unsure where to start, though.
Many who are new to manufacturing overseas find that partnering with an offshore management service is the most straight forward way to move manufacturing efforts offshore. Working with an offshore management service has many benefits, including fewer issues, a quicker resolution to issues that do appear, and leveraging the experience of the service to maximize ROI.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Frustrations
When first looking into offshore manufacturing you may be overwhelmed. How to choose the right factory? Fly overseas? Surf the web? How will you know the factory will provide the quality you’re expecting? How do you go about scheduling shipping your goods after they are manufactured? How do you juggle the logistics of supply and demand? What about tariffs? How will you communicate with the manufacturer? What can you expect in terms of costs? How will production delays be handled? Will the factory be able to source the right materials? What do you do if/when something goes wrong? These are all common questions and many who try to move their manufacturing offshore on their own often lose time and money trying to manage these processes. An offshore management service can help negotiate all these obstacles with relative ease.
Choosing the Right Factory
Choosing the right factory is important when you are manufacturing overseas. Not all factories are created equal. Each factory has its own strengths and weaknesses in terms of production time, product quality, price, experience and expertise, and access to specific raw materials needed for your product. For instance, China is known for its manufacturing, but that doesn’t mean every factory in china is right for your product. Working with an offshore management service will provide many benefits and insights.
Offshore management services will benefit you in the search for a factory. The best services will have native speakers on the ground. This means you won’t worry about communicating with someone in another language or trying to decide for yourself if any particular factory is right for your project. The management service can give you insight into factories that will best suit your specific needs based on their previous experience. This experience will benefit you in that you will know the factory you are working with is a legitimate option that has the experience and expertise to fulfill your needs as well as respect your intellectual property.
Handling Shipping and Logistics
Shipping and logistics are always a concern for those who are new to offshore manufacturing. When you are new to offshore manufacturing, it stands to reason there is a steep learning curve in shipping goods from one side of the world to the other. Are you ready to jump right in and learn? There are tools such as cargo load calculators, that can be used to help you maximize your shipping efficiency. Yet, if you feel overwhelmed with the idea of coordinating it all, you are not alone. This is another area where a manufacturing service can come into play and help. Tools alone cannot replace decades of experience.
Managing and coordinating with factories, calculating the shipping, preparing shipping, tariff calculations, shipping timeframes, and calculating the total landed cost are big benefits in working with an offshore management service. Having a management service manage your project will eliminate the learning curve and ensure that logistical and shipping considerations do not hinder your success.
Ability to Focus on Running a Business
One of the biggest benefits to teaming up with an offshore management service is that you can focus on running your business while the experts manage the variety of issues associated with your offshore manufacturing project. These issues include:
- Choosing the best factory for your unique product
- Communicating product specifications to the factory the right way
- Ensuring access to the correct raw materials
- Documenting realistic and accurate production times
- Shipping scheduling and all the paperwork that comes with it
- Ensuring shipping that is the most cost-effective for your unique situation
- Managing tariffs associated with manufacturing overseas, if applicable
While the offshore management service is focusing on these tasks and others, you do what you know how to do best: work on your business. Trying to juggle offshore manufacturing in addition to woeking on your business is a heavy load. You don’t want either to suffer. Using your offshore manufacturing service to manage your offshore supply chain ensures the process runs smoothly every step of the way. There obviously is a cost to hiring a management service but according to companies that use the expertise of offshore management services, the benefits far outweigh the cost.
ITI Wants to Be Your Offshore Management Service
If you’re ready to take your manufacturing overseas but aren’t sure where to start, we can help. We’ve been working with companies like yours for more than 40+ years, helping them manage their offshore supply chains so they can focus on growing their businesses.
We can be as involved as you would like with every step of the process, as we have people on the ground in China and other manufacturing hubs. We also have established relationships with a wide variety of factories and will help to ensure that your products are consistently manufactured to your specifications.
Learn more about ITI Manufacturing’s offshore management services by clicking here.
