Top 10 Advantages of On-Demand Manufacturing

If you have a product you want to bring to market, you can make that happen in many ways. You could follow the legacy approach and try to do business with an overseas manufacturer. That’s probably a good way to go if you are General Electric.
But if you’re a small business owner or engineer working through the prototyping stage, you may want to opt instead for an on-demand manufacturing service located right in the US. Agile digital manufacturers offer more manufacturing opportunities for small-to-medium technology companies. Here are the top 10 reasons why.

With legacy manufacturing services, it could take days and many emails just to get a quote for your prototype or production run. Choose an on-demand manufacturing partner and simply upload your design documents and BOM, then find out how much your project will cost instantly.

On-demand manufacturing companies welcome your PCB prototyping order and will turn it around quickly. Iterate as much as you need to achieve perfection. Additionally, flexible manufacturing options allow you to pivot to full production without changing CM partners.

Whether you need thousands of PCB assemblies or only a few, you can find a partner who will happily take your order.

Your quantity may not be very high, but that doesn’t mean your costs should be. On-demand manufacturing allows vendors to leverage technology to efficiently combine small orders into larger ones. This helps keep prices down for everyone.

Offshoring large EMS productions can save money on labor. However, for smaller-scale operations, any cost saving is offset by the additional level of complexity, delay, and risk. New technologies make it possible for companies in the United States to offer competitive prices on PCBA and device manufacturing.

Securely upload your design documents, BOM, and any other files necessary for your project completion.

You likely wouldn’t do business with a bank or an airline that didn’t have an online portal to manage your project. Heck, Domino’s even gives you real-time insight into the progress of your pizza. There’s no reason to settle for anything less when it comes to your manufacturing partner. Choose one with a portal for easy project and inventory management.

Your on-demand manufacturing partner already has relationships in place with parts vendors. They can leverage these relationships and their buying levels across many customers to keep costs down. You avoid the extra costs and hassle of negotiating on your own.

Don’t want to fill a warehouse with your products as you wait for the orders to roll in? No problem. You can find a service provider that will keep your products in inventory until they are ready to fly the nest.

Why not take it the last mile and let your partner package and ship the products directly to the customer? You’ll reduce shipping costs and get your products into the hands of your customers right away. Better yet if your on-demand manufacturing provider has an API to integrate their software with your order system for seamless fulfillment.
On-demand manufacturing has a lot going for it. It’s the perfect choice if you want to spend your time thinking about what your product can do and how you can sell it, and let someone else worry about the production and fulfillment details.