Managing relationships and interactions between customers and contract manufacturers: from asking prices to finished projects.

TOP 5 mistakes to avoid.

• Mistake 1. Non-transparent price for contract manufacturing services.

Companies have different approaches to the transparency of the cost of contract work. Many contractors immediately describe what the price is formed from, but there are also those who do not disclose the mechanism of cost formation. A clear price formation with a description of services always has a beneficial effect on customer loyalty.

To this, it is worth adding a long response time to the request from the production side. No one likes to wait too long for an answer. The answer in 1-2 hours can be called ideal. No one likes to wait for a long time, and even more so the lack of an answer at all. Excuses that the manager is on vacation or at lunch, or busy equals the loss of a client.

Many contract manufacturing companies spend their budgets on advertising and any potential customer needs to be protected.

• Mistake 2. Tolling raw materials and components in bulk.

Imagine a situation where the customer and the contract production have entered into a contract that stipulates automatic installation and payment only for this. But when a box of raw materials is opened at the factory and several bags of loose materials are found, which no one has paid for, it is puzzling. The customer did not pay for the soldering of loose components, which need to divert human resources, equipment and time. Such understatement does not add credibility. Dear customers, it is better to specify in advance in what form the components will be delivered, since the price calculation may be different.

I will add to this that the customers of contract work often supply the raw materials exactly for the project without any stock, although many sites have a desirable stock. The accidental loss of even one component leads to an incomplete printed circuit board. Dear customers-deliver components with a small margin and in case of accidental loss, you will not need to spend time waiting for the delivery of the deficit.

• Mistake 3. The contract contains no requirements for soldering materials and for washing printed circuit boards.

The customer enters into a contract with the production. The contract manufacturer assembles the product under this contract, based on the basic principles – NOCLEAN lead solder paste, wash-free process technology. A typical build, but where is the error here?- At the time of drawing up the contract, the contract manufacturer did not ask questions about the technical processes of washing and the materials used, and the customer is a novice and could not have guessed this. As a result, the customer receives his products not washed, although he probably assumed that they would be washed by default.

Such problems occur and this is primarily due to the fact that some contract manufacturers do not ask a few additional questions.

• Mistake 4. Making changes in the production process.

Many people had such a situation when the customer calls the production and is informed that it is necessary to change or remove some component. There's nothing wrong with that, but……

- Any change in the drawings is possible only under the signature of the customer with the preparation of an additional agreement. Sometimes it happened that when the project was submitted, the customer forgot that he personally made the changes.

- Customers need to understand the seriousness of the situation. Any alteration entails additional production costs and this must be understood and paid for.

• Mistake 5. Project quality assessment.

It is necessary to specify the options for acceptance of the finished product in the contract between the contract production and the customer. You can specify your own acceptance principles, or you can use the acceptance classes from the IPC-A-610 standard. This applies to the assembly of electronic modules, as well as harnesses and wires. This classification is used in many countries and it is really convenient.

My speech at the conference with English subtitles.