There are a wide range of benefits to keeping manufacturing local; particularly when it comes to the manufacturing industry and repetition engineering. These benefits come in many forms, such as economic, logistical, risk management, simplified communication channels and more. There are benefits to both customer and the local manufacturer, but also to the wider community. The creation of jobs and associated economic benefits flow back along the supply chain and generates local prosperity, creating many indirect benefits to the local community. Manufacturing locally also helps to keep skill and expertise in the local community, and facilitates knowledge transfer within the industry and across generations, providing skilled jobs for the future generations.
Lower minimum orders combined with reduced shipping time means that product development is a much smoother process with a local manufacturer.
Being closer to the customer, there are less communication issues, due to time zone or language difficulties. Miscommunications can lead to greater cost of staff to maintain communication and ensure the project is progressing as required. These kinds of issues indirectly increase the cost of a given manufacturing project in a way that is often not expected or planned for, leading to project delays.
The ease of communication allows the customer to easily work with the manufacturer during the product development to ensure manufacturability is taken into account. This streamlines the process, ensuring local manufacturing jobs progress smoothly.
Manufacturing locally reduces time and effort to perform periodic quality assurance and control checks. When you outsource manufacturing to internationally based companies, it becomes much more effort intensive to perform any Quality control or progress checks which would be a simple task when locally manufacturing.
Thanks to reduced shipping time and the ease of communication, the customer can get those urgent manufacturing projects completed in a more timely manner.
It may be appealing to outsource manufacturing to reduce production costs, but there are a range of hidden costs associated with this. Further risks come in the form of manufactured parts not being to the standard required. When you manufacture locally, the risk of delays and hidden costs along the way is minimised – you pay what you were quoted and receive the finished product to schedule.
Local manufacturing is mutually beneficial for customer and the local manufacturer, as well as being beneficial to the wider community. However many of these benefits are not easily quantifiable and hence can be overlooked when comparing quotes from international manufacturers which appear to be cheaper than the local manufacturers. But there are a number of risks and hidden costs that are not accounted for in these quotes, which invariably emerge throughout the process. These hidden costs once accounted for can blow out the cost of the project to be greater than it would have been to go with the local manufacturer. Finally, it’s just always good to see the Australian made stamp on products, and consumers appreciate this too, and are willing to buy a locally made product they can be confident in.
JGM Engineering is a Repetition Engineering Workshop based in Penrith, Sydney NSW. We specialise in quality and precise machining of customer components. A highly skilled staff with over 30 years of experience in the engineering Industry. We offer small to large production runs on our automated CNC machines.
