For any manufacturer of electronic products or products that have electrical components, one of the biggest concerns is managing inventories for maximum efficiency of your production line. Often this means taking care when selecting your electro-mechanical assembly provider, and working closely with them to make sure your inventory management and delivery system is working at the highest level. Here are a few tips.
1. Make Sure You Have a Single Point of Contact
When working with any supplier of parts and raw materials, it really pays to have a single point of contact that you can go to for answers to questions or to resolve issues quickly. While it may not seem that important, having a single account manager who knows your business and production line inside and out, and who is intimately familiar with the design of your assemblies and how they are implemented into your product, can be a huge benefit.
When you call in with a question, you do not want to wait for someone to research your company, production line, and product to get up to speed before they can give you a good answer.
2. Custom Design for Rapid Installation
Your account manager will likely be an electrical or mechanical engineer who will not only design a wiring assembly that works with your product, but will design it in a way that allows for rapid and efficient installation with little to no opportunities for technician error. Often this means that assemblies come bundled and labeled in a way that makes installation almost fool-proof.
3. Training for Your Assembly Line
Another way your account manager can help you, is to help train your production staff in installing cabling products and quality checking their work. Not only will your technicians be provided with documentation and technical drawings at their workstations to help them with the install, but they will receive ample training on both installation and looking out for errors. This training can be conducted at your facility in a way that is minimally intrusive to your production needs.
4. Inventory Tracking and Automatic Re-Orders
If your cabling provider does not use some form of inventory management software, you may want to consider finding a different manufacturer. This type of system ensures that your assembly line receives the parts and raw materials they need, exactly when they need them. As your production line works through your existing inventory of parts and raw materials, the software will trigger an automatic re-order of new parts as soon as inventory levels fall below a pre-determined amount that you can customize to your needs.
5. Custom Labeling and Coloring
One more way that a professional custom cable provider can help your operation is by custom labeling, coloring, or striping their products. This allows your technicians to easily and quickly identify the part they need by sight, and helps make sure that all connectors are installed in the correct ports. You can even get your production line’s input on this to find out what would be the best method. Custom colors for wires, custom labeling, or custom striping for rapid identification.