How to find the best manufacturers

Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and on today's episode about how to launch a product, I want to talk about how to find the best manufacturers. Now, there are many manufacturers. There's thousands and thousands of manufacturers. It's very easy to find a manufacturer, A quick Google search and you will find more manufacturers than you ever thought actually worked in a specific industry. So it's not just about finding a manufacturer. You want to be finding the right manufacturer and ideally the best manufacturer for your product. And this is something I've worked in sourcing. I've been the guy to have to go find all the manufacturers for a project. And it definitely takes work. There are things to keep in mind. And so in today's video, I just want to talk about what can a manufacturer do, manufacturing methods, one or multiple points of contact, location, and validate production. So first, what can a manufacturer do? So manufacturers are what they seem. They produce the actual product. Different manufacturers will produce the actual product or packaging. They're sometimes the same, but very rarely. And manufacturers can do things like assembly and kitting and final kind of just packaging up your product to ship out. So some of them offer that, but not all do. So When you're looking, you can't assume that a manufacturer is going to be able to do all the assembly and they're going to be able to do the final packaging and boxing to actually ship out. So there are manufacturers who do, and there's also companies that just specialize in assembly or final assembly in order to package it up and ship it to a customer. And so what they can do is a little bit of a broad range, but not all of them do that. So you want to be aware of that. When looking for a manufacturer, that if you're looking for an all-in-one, you have to look specifically for an all-in-one.

Not all of them are going to do that.

There are definitely manufacturers that can be a single stop for you where they will make the product, they'll make the tooling, they will make the packaging, they will assemble the product, they will test the product, and they will put that product into its packaging for delivery to a customer. However, it's rare that you have all of those. Tooling manufacturers are usually separate from the manufacturer that actually uses the tooling. Not always, there's some that do both, but there's manufacturers that all they do is they're tooling fabricators. So if you want injection molding, you're gonna find a tooling manufacturer that can produce the tooling for your part. And sometimes they can do injection molding, sometimes they just make the tooling and then you take that to an injection molding company. Now, when you're looking for the best manufacturers, you want to be thinking about manufacturing methods. So the second thing here, manufacturing methods are important. You need to know what manufacturing methods you're looking for and have an idea of what some alternatives are. And so when you're looking for the best manufacturer, you want to be able to find one that is able to answer those questions about which manufacturing methods are best. What did they use? What have they done in the past? And if they're a really good manufacturer, they'll be able to look at your product and go, well, this is how I would make it. We've made it in these other ways. But we use these manufacturing methods because they work best for this type of product and this type of shape or material that you're wanting to produce. So manufacturing methods are really important. You should know them and you should be able to get advice from the manufacturer on what they would do. And that's something that I did all the time when I was sourcing. I would say, hey, this is what I want to get made. You tell me how, how you would make it. And then I would see if that aligned with my experience in actually producing it. And if it didn't, I would just ask them a question of, well, why? Why do you pick that manufacturing method? What's the benefit over X? And so you want to— you need to have knowledge on what manufacturing processes are out there so that you can have that intelligent conversation and ask those questions of, well, why are you picking this manufacturing method over this one? What is your reasoning? Why is it that way for you? I've seen it done these other ways. And sometimes they come back and they say, oh, well, it's just because we don't have that machine. Or sometimes they come back and they say, well, we have that machine, we used to do it, but this is more efficient. We waste less material and we're able to have tighter tolerances, for example. And if that's their answer, then great. You've just figured out someone who knows what they're doing. And they've done it enough to know that there's a better way, and then they changed that better way. So understanding manufacturing methods and making sure that you're looking for a manufacturer for your specific method is key, but also being flexible in case the manufacturer has an actual valid reason to say, no, we should do it in this other way. And that's what you want. The best manufacturer out there is going to consult you some And they do that as a designer. I've contacted the manufacturers. I've spent a lot of time with them. It's definitely the part of the process of, hey, here's my design. This is how I think it should be done. What would you do? They outline it, and then you compare and contrast and figure out what's going to be the best process based on cost, based on time efficiency. So maybe they're thinking in a high speed. They're like, oh, well, this is the fastest way to do it. But you're not in a rush at all. You care more about price or quality or tolerance, something like that. And so it's a conversation, and you want to make sure you understand manufacturing methods. And by doing that, you'll be able to help identify which one is going to be the best for you. Third thing to talk about is how many points of contact should you have, one or multiple? So in my experience, you always want a couple people at a manufacturer that are your point of contact that you can contact at any time about the product. That can check in. It's not that you're going to have, you know, a bad relationship with one of them or that one is bad necessarily, but having 2 means that if something comes up, one is out of the office, you're going to have 2 people that you can contact, especially when you're in production and you're really— especially your ramp-up period where you may have things changing, things may be shifting if you're going through any design changes. You want to make sure that you're able to get any changes to the floor as quickly as possible. And so having a couple people that you can email at the same time and just make sure that it's covered and people are aware, that can be really beneficial. Smaller shops, obviously it's gonna be a little bit harder. There could only be one person to contact, which is totally fine. Small shops do great work. I've worked with small shops pretty much all over my entire career. I've used hundreds of them at this point, likely, and that's not a bad thing. Just be aware that if you have larger runs or if they're out, it's going to be harder to get a hold of them. So just be aware of that as you're finding the best manufacturer for you. Fourth thing, location. So where it's located, obviously there's taxes to take into consideration, there's shipping to take into consideration. But you also want to be aware of, you know, depending on what they're doing, you might find somebody that's really cheap in one country for one part and cheap for another, uh, part in another, another country, and one that's the high-quality part that you really need to be perfect in a third country. And you want to think about how many times are your individual parts getting shipped between places in order to get made, assembled, tested, and then actually sent to either your warehouse or directly to your customer if you're sending it to some other company that's going to manage warehousing and shipping. You want to be aware of the location of each individual manufacturer and think about the cost that it's going to take to ship. So yeah, if you find a really great price, they're able to do everything the quality you want, but their shipping eats it up so that your cost is actually pretty similar to another one that's right next door, you probably want to look at picking the one that's right next door to your other manufacturer because they will be able to also communicate quicker. They'll be able to bring things over. It'll, it'll work. It can work a little bit better. So thinking that through, location does matter, and it's not just about finding the cheapest or finding the lowest quality, highest quality, whatever, you know, your factors you're looking for. You want to look at the shipping in between each one and what that's going to do to your timeline. So obviously shipping a product is going to take time, and also what is it going to do to your actual real cost. And if you're sustainably minded, if you're, you're thinking about Well, what is the carbon footprint of my product? Shipping things is not ideal to do as part of a process, so you want to limit that as much as possible. So thinking about location, there's more than just, I was in a different country, do I have to pay taxes on it, additional import taxes, and what is the final shipping distance? from them to the customer. You want to think about all the different manufacturers if you have multiple ones and how they all align and what that cost, real cost, is going to be.

Number 5, the last thing I want to talk about is validate productions. So getting samples, visiting the facilities, and making sure that they can actually do what you want them to do. So with samples, samples are always great. They're good to have. Keep in mind that samples can be cherry-picked and it doesn't necessarily represent all production. So with that discussion, depending on how you set up the quality control, which you definitely want to have that conversation— quality control, this is what I'll accept, this is what I won't accept— and if you do that then you'll be able to basically believe 100% samples that are given. Also, if someone is not willing to hold up to a certain quality and they won't agree to replace or refund for bad product that don't meet your standards, don't go with them. Never do that. So if, if no one is willing to basically back up their work and actually make sure that the product that they produce is actually what it's supposed to be, then you just need to walk away. It doesn't matter how good of a price or how good of a referral they might be. Don't do it unless you have that, because you need to make sure that your product is made to your specifications. So in this case, you want to make sure that your drawings— those are the control documents. If the part doesn't match the drawings, if it's not within the dimensions, you should be able to reject it, send it back, and get it replaced for no extra charge. Maybe shipping, might charge shipping, but other than that, it should be replaced. Ideally, no shipping at all because that mistake is on their end. So when you're validating that they can do production, samples are good but not your basis. They shouldn't be your only thing to base everything off of. Visiting the factories, visiting their actual floor, getting an idea of what it looks like. If you're not familiar with manufacturing floors, then you won't have a reference point. I have walked enough manufacturing floors to know that if I walk onto a floor, if it looks like one where people are doing what they're supposed to be, if there's quality, if things are done in a correct way, or at least in a standard way, I'll be able to know pretty well off of just walking through facility. Of course, you know, for those that have brought up this concern, people can make their factory look really good for you for a walkthrough, right? So part of it is all that, all those steps, getting samples, walking through, talking to them, talking to other customers. If they can give you, or not even give you, but show you at the very least, products that are actually coming off of their line. Um, that way you're— if you're like walking by a live line, product line getting made, and the production line is actually producing product, they're able to actually just pull one off, off the line and show you. That kind of sampling is really strong because it's really hard for them to fake that, and it's a really good way for you to see, oh well, this is one that's like actually in process, is being manufactured right now. This was the quality, this is what they're making, these are the processes they're using. So that can allow you to get a better idea of what they're capable of. And again, it all comes back to whatever validation you do, whatever testing you do. If you have them make samples, you can have them actually produce samples of your product, um, depending on the tooling and everything. You can have that happen without a huge expense. But whatever you do, make sure that your drawings are the control documents so that if there is a problem down the road at some point, you have those as the master document saying what is good and what is not. And that will ensure that, you know, your validation helps you select the best that you can tell up front, and the drawings and documentation ensure that no matter what, you will actually get the product you asked for and purchased, or your money back. And that will basically be the insurance to make sure that your validation process worked. So hopefully this gives you some ideas of things that you need to keep in mind and how to actually go through the process of selecting, validating, and ensuring that not only one manufacturer, but if you have multiple manufacturers, you are really optimizing For the best manufacturers and the best process around those manufacturers getting the product made and delivered to your customers.

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Thank you.