5 Key Benefits of Outsourcing Machine Part Production

When you own, run, or otherwise manage a manufacturing business, there are certain things that should always be kept in-house and certain things, like advertising or finances, that can easily be outsourced to more competent, specialized professionals. However, a lot of manufacturers fail to see the opportunity to outsource certain forms of production, including machine parts production, to more focused outside businesses. Many of the biggest names in manufacturing outsource their parts production. When it comes to machine parts production, outsourcing your business’ needs to a reputable, domestic manufacturer carries a lot of benefits for your business.

1. Reduce your overhead with fewer highly-skilled staff positions on site. This may seem self-explanatory, but maintaining the highly-skilled staff required to design and produce your own parts on-site can quickly add to your overhead and increase the cost of your finished products to your customers. Recruiting and providing these skilled staff members with training, benefits, and a competitive salary can be a major expense, and one your business doesn’t necessarily need to absorb. There are many competitive, cost-effective machine parts manufacturers across the country who already have a skilled staff and the ability to provide whatever parts are required affordably and in a timely manner.
2. Prioritizing employee focus on your business’ area of expertise. Instead of needing employees, project managers, and management who are familiar with parts production, you can focus on hiring, training and retaining a very competent staff whose primary focus and background is in your business’ products and production process, not in parts design and production. This means that your team is more highly-specialized, making it easier for your management team to focus on increasing the staff’s skill levels with regard to your business’ primary objectives and not on ancillary production. This streamlines your business’ needs and may even help to encourage employee innovation, as many of them will undoubtedly be discussing your production processes and end products with co-workers during breaks and after-hours socialization. Having them all share knowledge of the integral parts of the business, instead of on parts manufacturing, means that they can more easily collaborate and challenge each other to improve in performance and knowledge.
3. Third-party guarantee for timely delivery and product quality. If someone that your company has hired internally makes a mistake or leaves one’s position unexpectedly, especially if he or she is highly-skilled and part of a small team (or heaven forbid, the only one on staff with knowledge of this area), it can really leave your entire manufacturing process in a lurch. Without the parts you need, or with parts that are poorly designed or of substandard quality, your primary products will suffer. Customers may complain, or worse, they may return their purchase and assign their loyalty to a different manufacturer. Having a dependable, skilled, off-site team working for you ensures that there is independent quality control and very little risk of supply interruption. This, in turn, makes your manufacturing business more reliable for your clients and customers, allowing you to expand and grow your business and customer base. Your machine parts supplier will have a great understanding of how competitive the market for parts can be and will also know that your company could return to producing the parts in house, motivating them to provide you with top-notch service and highly competitive prices.
4. Custom parts manufacturing and sourcing. Because they specialize in the production of the parts your business needs to produce its products and likely purchase raw materials in much greater quantity than your business would ever need, they can produce the same parts for a lower price, sometimes a fraction of the cost that your business was previously incurring by manufacturing these parts in-house. Those savings on machine parts can either be passed on to the customers in terms of a price reduction or price increase freeze or they can be reinvested in the business, allowing you to advertise more, give your employees a cost of living wage increase, add more positions to your main manufacturing lines, or simply pad the budget for the upcoming months.
5. Reducing your equipment purchasing and maintenance costs. The more parts you make in house, the more machines and presses you will need to purchase or possibly lease and then maintain. By outsourcing parts production, you can eliminate the need to purchase new equipment for parts manufacturing and the expense of maintaining and repairing that equipment. Additionally, any parts manufacturing equipment in-house can be sold on the secondary market to other manufacturers, allowing your business to recoup its investment in that part’s manufacturing equipment.

With such a large number of reputable, affordable parts manufacturers and designers available domestically, it just makes sense to keep your business and staff focused on the core of your business and not on secondary concerns and products. Not only will this help you to keep costs lower, it may even result in better production rates and a happier, more skilled staff. That’s the goal behind Ballard Machine Works. We’re in the business of making solid machine parts, accessories, and equipment for customers across a wide range of industries and we do it right from our facility in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Find out more about our process and why businesses of every size are choosing a local expert over low-cost, low-reliability overseas productions by contacting us today.

Image source, labelled for reuse