Contract manufacturing offers significant advantages for companies that need consistent part production over an extended period of time. These agreements can reduce costs by offering customers pricing at scale and minimizing administrative tasks.
However, the cost savings of contract manufacturing can disappear quickly if you don’t choose the right precision machine shop as a partner.
At Focused on Machining, we’ve structured our business to support reliable, long-term partnerships. If you’re evaluating contract manufacturing services, here are four essential questions to ask to be sure your partner has accounted for every detail.
Question 1: How Do You Maintain Quality Documentation For Large Orders?
When shops run blanket orders, they often produce parts in large batches to maximize efficiency. This approach to custom CNC machining reduces costs, but it can also create documentation challenges, especially when parts undergo secondary processes like plating.
If a shop produces 300 parts at once but delivers them in multiple shipments over several months, they need a proper system to maintain accurate quality documentation for every part.
Our approach: Our ERP system allows us to segregate documentation by delivery lot, even when working in large batches. Every shipment you receive includes precisely matched quality documentation. This setup allows us to easily track parts through production and quickly respond to your questions about the status of upcoming deliveries in your contract manufacturing services agreement.
Question 2: How Do You Track And Isolate Potential Issues?
If a quality issue arises, it’s critical that the affected parts be quickly identified. However, many shops do not have systematic methods for tracking exactly which parts may be affected by a quality concern. Without proper lot segmentation and documentation, a single issue could require unnecessary rework of months of production.
Our approach: Our systems enable clear traceability. We can quickly determine the specific subset of parts that were affected by quality concerns through our detailed records of materials, processing, and inspection.
Question 3: What Happens If We Have Design Revisions?
While contract manufacturing services typically involve mature, stable designs, engineering changes are sometimes still necessary. Without clear policies for handling revisions, these changes can lead to disputes over inventory and pricing with your CNC machine shop, or even production delays.
Our approach: We address revision management upfront in all long-term agreements. If customers ask us to hold inventory, we clarify who assumes responsibility if revisions occur. This keeps communication clear and protects both parties from unexpected costs.
Question 4: How Do You Handle Material Pricing Fluctuations?
Today’s manufacturing landscape faces a great deal of uncertainty, and potential material price changes are a source of risk in long-term agreements for CNC machining services. Without proper planning, a significant fluctuation in the price of aluminum, for instance, could destroy the financial benefits of these arrangements.
Our approach: We offer several strategies to reduce your material pricing risks. If you prefer total price stability to eliminate all risk, we can discuss purchasing and paying for all required material upfront. A second option is to offer pricing bands, with pricing adjustments if material costs go outside of these limits.
The Benefits of Our Long-Term Agreement Structure
At Focused on Machining, we’ve designed every detail of our systems and processes to ensure you get the maximum benefit from our long-term agreements. We aim for transparency, risk management, and clear communication to build a strong partnership over the duration of the agreement—and beyond.
Request a quote today to start contract manufacturing services with a Colorado machine shop that’s already thought through all of the “what-ifs” upfront!