East West Manufacturing Blog

No matter the complexity, manufacturers are always looking for ways to reduce the cost of making things, and sometimes they end up with a better product as a result. That process is called value engineering. And yes, it's possible to make a better product through value engineering, especially if you ask a lot of the right questions.

Here’s the scenario: You have a part that you’ve been making and selling but you’ve decided to put it out to quote. You send your drawings package and samples of the part to a contract manufacturer that has a reputation for providing quality engineering support. In reviewing the drawings, the project engineer picks up on a small but significant...

Very few people walk into a store, take an item off the shelf and purchase it without looking at the price. Even if you’re reasonably certain you can afford it, you’ll glance at the label to see how much it’s going to cost. If it’s what you want, and the price is in line with your desire for the item, you’ll buy it. But retail prices aren’t...

Raise your hand if you thought developing your product was going to be easy. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Product development takes time, creativity, resources and more time. One really vital piece of the development process is product testing for quality, reliability and durability. You need to find out whether your product will do what it's...

You’re in the market for some printed circuit board assemblies (PCBA) for your new product and you need to find the right supplier. You've looked online, gotten recommendations from friends and the choices are dizzying. Should you look domestically or overseas? What do you do now? Sourcing PCBA doesn't have to be difficult, but there are two basic...

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is generating significant disruption in the manufacturing industry. It’s easy to understand why. The methods used in additive manufacturing are significantly cheaper and less time consuming than traditional manufacturing. In a recent interview with 3D Printing Industry, an online journal, Daan...

Looking for a rubber component supplier can be a daunting task. The process is so multi-layered with discussions of materials (there are a bunch of them) and manufacturing processes (there are a bunch of those, too). And the variations of materials and processes makes for a fairly complex decision tree. But if you like asking questions, it'll be...

If you’ve looked around websites for contract manufacturers (CM) or manufacturers in general, you might have seen the phrase “engineered products.” Maybe you’ve even thought, “What’s an engineered product?” After all, isn’t everything that’s made an engineered product of some type?

When you’re on the hunt for a product design firm it’s essential to understand the scope of the project. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Everything we know is being disrupted. The way we buy groceries or read the newspaper (what’s a newspaper?), the way we travel and communicate. Fueled by breakneck advances in technology, disruption has made its way into every industry, including manufacturing.