As any successful business leader can tell you, effective growth is more than just increasing sales—it’s optimizing the entire organization to accommodate everything else that comes along with higher sales numbers.
This is especially true in the world of OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) manufacturing. Facilities need to be designed to handle not just current production volumes but also larger output demands as business grows. And even streamlining operations for existing production rates can help your team discover new ways to reduce costs and increase per-unit profit.
To help your manufacturing firm find operational savings, expunge inefficiencies, and drive growth, we’ve collected five OEM manufacturing best practices you’ll want to know about. Implementing these best practices can put your business on the fast track to future success.
Image by Alethea Flowers from Pixabay
OEM manufacturing is a tangible line of work: it requires extensive tools, machinery, square footage, human capital, and other resources to make happen.
However, managing these aspects doesn’t have to be a manual, pen-and-paper affair. In fact, it shouldn’t be—not when so many exciting digital solutions exist that can dramatically streamline how you monitor, execute, and plan for everyday operations.
Many of these management tools are comprehensive, automated systems designed to eliminate the tedious legwork of data collection and tracking, leaving you to focus on what matters: data analysis and strategy execution.
Digital management strategies OEM manufacturers should know about include:
As an OEM manufacturer, your team is constantly innovating existing component designs and drafting up new ideas.
Because design is such a significant step of the product engineering process, the speed at which your designers can iterate and deploy their solutions will have an outsized impact on the overall speed at which your firm can move and grow.
However, by incorporating new tools and techniques into a designer’s workflows, you can cut down on needed design time without affecting product quality or their quality of life.
We’ve talked about some of today’s top productivity tools for design engineers before, and the tools we’ve highlighted—such as the renowned Autodesk Product Design Suite and the open-source TinyCAD—will feel tailor-made for enhancing OEM product design processes.
As your firm begins enjoying the benefits reaped from higher sales and more contracts, it becomes all the more important to enact effective inventory management strategies.
You need to know not only the quantities and locations of all your manufactured products—including what’s in WIP and what’s been completed—but also what parts are earmarked for which customers. With the diversity and quantity of parts being processed at any given time, the most effective solution is a digital one.
By incorporating automated inventory management solutions, OEMs can more easily establish, monitor, and react to stocking levels as parts supplies either balloon or diminish.
Being able to respond to these changes in real-time mitigates the risk of being under- or overstocked, which means healthier inventory levels that are better aligned with sales needs.
This transparency into your inventory makes it easier to predict order fulfillment timelines for customers—and support more customers to boot—paving the way for smoother growth.
With the goal to scale comes more of everything: more manufactured products to juggle, higher-volume processes, more frequent inbound and outbound logistics to plan for.
Being able to effectively account for these potential pain points is key to sustaining higher sales, which is why reassessing part identification strategies now can go a long way toward supporting long-term growth.
It all begins with understanding what ID solutions are best for your needs.
MPC offers custom-made nameplates for both heavy- and light-duty applications, and many of our products meet the rigorous standards set by the Department of Defense and other important customers of OEM solutions. Various materials can be specified as well, allowing you to choose exactly the right option for your unique use case.
Once you’ve chosen the right componentry tags for your needs, you can incorporate them into your manufacturing processes with advanced parts identification techniques such as automated labeling. These efforts can help reduce labeling errors and ensure batches of parts are being manufactured correctly and consistently—critical to setting yourself up for successful growth.
Photo by Minku Kang on Unsplash
Today’s consumer audiences and regulatory environments have made clear the importance of sustainability in today’s business climate, and that includes manufacturers.
We’re already seeing automakers promote green-inspired options such as vegan leather and other sustainable materials; initiatives such as these are only likely to grow more common in the coming years across all industries.
It’s therefore an excellent time to embrace sustainable OEM business practices—but what exactly would this involve?
It could mean incorporating facility upgrades like rooftop solar panels—investments that can potentially lower long-term operating costs while also reducing carbon emissions. It could also mean offering more eco-friendly product solutions, something that many automotive OEMs are likely considering. The sky is truly the limit.
By staying ahead of the curve and adopting our forward-thinking strategies today, you can position your OEM manufacturing firm as an industry leader. With effective execution, these ideas and best practices can help open the door to even more exciting sales and growth opportunities with governments, businesses, and other clientele who are as excited to innovate as you are.
In short, a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is only concerned with the maintenance of your assets, whereas Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software typically concerns itself with the entire life cycle of your assets. In this sense, maintenance (and CMMS) plays a vital role, but EAM can also include other important information, such as the location of the asset and its age.
It really depends on your equipment and its location. For example, our Metalphoto® Aluminum Nameplates have an expected outdoor life span of 20 years, whereas brass nameplates are an excellent choice for both interior and exterior decorative applications.
Your organization needs to be aware of at least three key laws that serve to protect the environment. These are:
Our sales engineers are experts in automatic asset tracking, tagging and identification,a nd can answer all your questions. Get in touch now.
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