East West Manufacturing Blog

If you’re in the midst of developing your next great product idea, you’ve likely been scouring the internet for the best information about taking this initial thought and making it into a reality. There are so many aspects to consider, making it easy to get overwhelmed and confused. We’d like to help walk you down this entrepreneurial path by...

Just think about it for a second. Every day you interact with hundreds of products that at one point were nothing more than an idea. But have you ever wondered what it looks like to take a product from prototype to production? It's a complex process that combines creativity and procedures. There are stops and starts. The timeline for...

Designing a new product is as easy as having a killer idea, right? Not right. There is a lot that goes into designing, developing, manufacturing, marketing and selling a new product. Millions of products have failed (take these 12 notorious product flops for instance), and chances are that all of them had at least one of the below mistakes in...

 When considering the value of engineering support as you go through the process of product development, there’s a great saying to keep in mind:

Experience is a great teacher, especially someone else’s experience.

If you have been involved in global contract manufacturing (CM) for more than a few months  you will inevitably hear the phrase, “Quote Fatigue.” Quote Fatigue occurs when a prospect submits an RFQ (Request for Quote) to a manufacturer for pricing — then another, then another, then another, without the manufacturer securing any new business.

When you work with engineers prepare yourself for a heaping helping of acronym soup! You’ll hear it all: PCB, PCBA, DFM, FMEA, PO, IP and of course the BOM, which stands for Bill of Materials. And while all those other acronyms are highly important to the product development process, it’s the BOM that gets you on your way.

If you thought the new product development process was going to be a walk in the park, you might need to take a look at a survey conducted by Gartner in 2017. The survey questioned CEOs about the success of new product introduction, and the numbers were sobering. 

Reducing costs is an ongoing task for every company, but what if I told you that you could save money without having to change a single millimeter of your product?

You’d probably be thrilled.

The product design and development process is a fascinating one, marrying creativity with the disciplines of math, science, engineering and marketing. Transforming an idea into a marketable product doesn’t just happen.

Third party testing and certification is one of the most important and expensive decisions you'll make in the product development process. Certification marks — whether UL, ETL or some other entity — demonstrate that the testing facility has tested samples of the product and found that it met that entities' requirements. The mark guarantees the...