Whether you’re manufacturing products in your living room or looking to incorporate another warehouse and factory into your supply chain, there are always ways to grow your manufacturing business.
Here are 9 steps to help you start growing your business:
1) Develop a Product-Market Fit
It is almost impossible to build a manufacturing business without first figuring out what you’re making and who it’s for. It would help if you had both – a great product and many customers who want it – before any manufacturing process makes sense. The best businesses only work with products that have been around for many years. In other words, they use their refined manufacturing processes as a competitive advantage, not as a crutch from an inferior idea.
2) Go Lean
When you start manufacturing, it’s easy to keep adding more people and equipment to try and address a long manufacturing lead time.
But manufacturing is a process that benefits from being streamlined, not beefed up. The simpler your operations become, the more quickly you can scale them when needed. Not only will lean manufacturing help you pass savings onto customers, but it’ll also make manufacturing less expensive for you in many ways: from getting new manufacturing partners on board to hiring only the employees who bring real value based on their ability to solve problems not based solely on speed or low cost of labor. As a manufacturer, you should always be looking for creative ways to cut costs and streamline your manufacturing process without sacrificing quality or safety by going lean.
Tools such as MRP software will help you manage your products, materials and monitor your production lines.
3) Know Your Manufacturing Partners
When optimizing your manufacturing processes, it’s essential to invest in high-quality components and machinery, down to the smallest details like stainless steel screws, to ensure the reliability and longevity of your production lines. Finding the right manufacturing partner is crucial for success. Look for a clear and dedicated manufacturing process and facilities optimized for manufacturing products like yours. They should also have a great track record with their customers – established relationships mean they can help you build similar ones, too.
4) Seek Out Manufacturing Advice
One of the most expensive lessons to learn as a manufacturing business owner is that manufacturing isn’t just about equipment and labor costs. There are countless expenses involved in manufacturing, from shipping fees to unloading fees, not to mention pesky maintenance issues that come up once machinery starts aging (and even new machinery requires additional work). During this learning curve, your best source of help is other manufacturing businesses that have been there and done that. You can vastly reduce the time it takes to come up to speed as a manufacturing business owner by reaching out to other businesses for their advice on manufacturing products.
5) Build an Efficient Supply Chain
An efficient supply chain is a key to manufacturing success because everything from product design to equipment costs to labor costs is all tied up in manufacturing processes – which largely depend on how efficiently materials move through a manufacturing process. Keep your manufacturing supplier lists short and stick to only one manufacturer of each component your product requires – this way, you’ll know exactly where every part comes from and be able to work with them more easily if problems arise. If you need custom parts, consider designing them yourself or working with a manufacturing partner that can help you do so. Avoid manufacturing products from multiple factories as this will exponentially increase lead times and decrease efficiencies.
6) Stay Lean
Lean manufacturing is a great way to support your manufacturing business. Still, it’s not manufacturing itself that should be the sole focus of your manufacturing business – or even its largest revenue generator. You have to balance manufacturing with everything else in your other business. The best businesses are those where manufacturing is simply a byproduct of a greater effort rather than the other way around.
7) Know What You Don’t Know
There are certain things every manufacturer learns only through experience – like how many parts it takes before their customers realize they might want something simpler or how much waste typically comes with manufacturing profits. As a manufacturing business owner, you’ll constantly be learning new things you didn’t know about before. Stay on top of your manufacturing game by keeping an open line of communication between yourself and your manufacturing partners so that they can alert you to problems or issues before they become costly.
8) Find the Best Manufacturing Materials
There are thousands upon thousands of different manufacturing materials out there – each one is created for specific purposes and requires specific manufacturing equipment to produce them. Knowing which manufacturing material is right for a particular application takes patience and research, and a thorough knowledge of what your manufacturing partners need from those materials to design the perfect product. The materials you use are almost as important as how they’re used in manufacturing.
9) Don’t Skimp on Manufacturing Equipment
Manufacturing equipment can be expensive – especially equipment that doesn’t always get a lot of use. However, manufacturing automation or processes with equipment will often pay for themselves in increased productivity and lower costs – it’s simply a numbers game at that point. The more your manufacturing business can automate, the more profit you can make without hiring an army of human workers to do so. If you find yourself strapped for space or money but need to keep manufacturing up and running, consider outsourcing some of your manufacturing work to others specializing in equipment, processes, automation, etc. Manufacturers who focus on equipment for others understand how to use them so much more efficiently than the owner of a manufacturing business whose main expertise is in manufacturing products can.
