Manufacturing your goods offshore is very commonplace today. Many businesses choose to go the offshore manufacturing route because it offer more affordable pricing on raw goods and labor. The idea to move manufacturing to China is not new, in fact, China has become a manufacturing superpower, providing many of our everyday goods.
When you decide to start manufacturing offshore and you have chosen your factory, your next job is to consider shipping. Shipping logistics can be overwhelming when you are new to manufacturing away from home. Yet, there are great tools such as cargo load calculators that can help to minimize frustration and get goods to you as affordably as possible.
Before you began manufacturing offshore you probably only experienced shipping personal packages. Now, you’re probably looking at shipping containers. Suddenly you might feel that you are in over your head. How much can you fit in one shipping container? What is the best way to pack it? How many containers will you need per shipment? These are questions that those who are new to offshore manufacturing will always face. There is a steep learning curve to moving your manufacturing offshore and many find that it is too much and end up teaming up with an offshore manufacturing service, or OMS, to take over and handle their needs.
Avoiding Offshore Manufacturing Frustration
If you are new to offshore manufacturing and you are beginning to feel overwhelmed or frustrated but aren’t willing to invest in offshore management services yet, do not despair. There are great tools that can help you, namely a cargo load calculator. This is a great tool that will do the heavy lifting for you.
What this load calculator does is ask some specifics about what you’ll be shipping including but may not be limited to:
- The measurements of the packages you’ll be shipping
- The weight of the packages you’ll be shipping
- The type of shipping container you’ll be utilizing
- Whether the container will be loaded on pallets or the floor
- The number of packages you’ll be shipping
This information will be used to calculate and illustrate exactly how you can most efficiently ship your goods. This calculator takes the frustration out of trying to determine how you need to fill your shipping container when you are not there on the ground looking at the packages or the container options. Another thing that the calculator can do is help you communicate with your freight company overseas. If there are language barriers, as there often are, you can use the calculations and illustrations to communicate effectively.
Making Shipping Affordable
When you use a calculator to help you determine how a shipping container is best packed, it can help make your shipping more affordable. What the
calculator does is maximize the space in the container, illustrating for you how to best load the container so you can get as much in it as possible. When using a calculator you may be able to greatly reduce the number of containers you are paying to ship while still getting all of your product when you need it.
Loading containers in this way does not just reduce the number of containers you may need to receive all of your product, but it can also help to ensure that the product is packed as effectively as possible to reduce breakage during transportation. Breakage is an often overlooked part of shipping costs and can add to overall shipping expenses because broken products cannot be sold. Ensuring that your shipping containers are packed as effectively as possible will help to lower your overall cost of shipping and shipping-related damages.
Planning for Success
Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” This is also true with offshore manufacturing and the shipping logistics that come along with it. When you utilize tools such as a cargo load calculator, you are planning to successfully transport goods from one location to another. Planning in such a way, with a tool that helps you be as efficient and as precise as possible, helps you plan for your success. When you logically approach shipping, you’ll find that not only is your frustration reduced, but you can receive your goods as affordably as possible, and you’ll also help to ensure that items are transported safely.
ITI Wants to Help You Succeed with Offshore Manufacturing
We hope that you have taken the time to use our cargo load calculator. We believe this is a powerful tool that can make shipping logistics much more straight forward and we invite you to use it as often as you need. If you find that you are still overwhelmed with managing your offshore manufacturing, we can offer you further assistance.
With more than 30 years in the business, we have perfected offshore management services and would love to help. We have people on the ground in China and we have built relationships with factories, understanding their culture, and communicating with them effectively. At ITI Manufacturing, we enjoy taking a leadership role and ensuring the right factory is chosen, manufacturing is of the highest quality, and shipping is streamlined for our clients. This allows our clients to do what they do best: run their business. While they run their business, we are taking care of the details and ensuring prompt delivery of the product. Want to learn more about how we do this? Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation today. WE would love to hear about what you’re doing and explain how we can simplify the process.
