East West Manufacturing Blog

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.

Rework happens. 

In fact, a 2013 study by the Lenox Institute of Technology of more than 100 industrial metal-cutting operations found that, “regardless of the percentage of machine uptime reported, respondents admitted that finished products don’t pass first inspection 20% of the time and require rework.”

Is there any value in seeking FDA approval for a product that doesn’t require FDA approval? Is a UL mark necessary? Isn't all this certification just a racket? Have you ever heard these questions or asked them yourself? You’re not alone.

Relationships are tricky things. When they're good it's usually because each party has something the other needs, it's a mutually beneficial. That's true when you're looking for manufacturing suppliers, too. You're looking for a good fit. You win, they win. 

Have you ever heard the phrase "driveway moments"? The term was coined by NPR to describe those stories you can't leave. You pull into the driveway, put the car in park and just sit there until the story is over — it's that compelling. 

A few stories that I read the past few weeks fall into that category. If I was listening to the radio and got...