East West Manufacturing Blog

Product development can be an arduous process, with more twists and turns than San Francisco's famed Lombard Street. 

Photo by David Yu

[Editor's note: This blog post originally ran in January 2017.]

You’re a company with an air- or water-moving product looking for a contract manufacturer (CM) to help take your design from prototype to market. There are plenty of companies out there willing to help you. But how do you sort through them? What differentiators should you look for?

Last year I upgraded my phone. It’s a beautiful phone – sleek, champagne colored. I love the feel of it. Unfortunately, I rarely see what the phone actually looks like because after purchase I immediately encased it in a hard plastic, optic yellow case with a turquoise blue rubber overlay.

I did that because I know me. I will drop the phone and...

If you're a regular blog reader you might have read the title and said, "It's TOO EARLY to start reading about planning for Chinese New Year!" And you're sort of right.

It's true you don't have to get your orders in for Chinese New Year (CNY). That would be overkill. But it's not too early to look at the calendar and strategize about how to avoid...

Design is a big deal. It’s so big it’s a category with subcategories under it. There’s design for

 So, your contract manufacturer offers Value Engineering. That’s nice.

Just one question: What does that mean?

If you've ever had questions about the do's and don'ts of injection molding, this is the post for you. It's such valuable information, in fact, we asked the author, our colleague Jeff Tadin, Senior Product Development Engineer at East West, to walk us through it on video. 

In the beginning, there was an idea. But what comes next? How do you turn your vision into a reality? Or should you? Is it time to talk with an product development firm and, if so, where do you start?

Normally at the start of a manufacturing relationship, the contract manufacturer will ask the customer for a spec sheet — a report showing a variety of acceptable tolerances for the part or product. But if it’s a new product, or an older product that has undergone tweaks or changes through the years, there might not be a neat, up-to-date report.

...

Looking for ways to increase the efficiency and value of your refrigeration system?

Who isn't?

Here are five suggestions — some simple, and some requiring consideration, investigation and investment — to improve the effectiveness of your cooling system.