The First 6 Months
What can I expect from a partnership with CPC ?
What is the right engagement point with CPC?
CPC’s point of entry is dictated by your willingness to incorporate our skills into your design process. If you intend on keeping all of the design work in-house, your initial engagement with us might be at the prototype stage. If you are intent on outsourcing at a higher level of assembly and are inclined to look towards our assistance with component selection, cost containment, and DFMA analysis, then you would be well served if you engage with us at the earliest stages of product development and set up with us a multi-faceted NPI engagement plan that include of the above and more.
Relationship Management Set Up
You’ll be assigned a project manager who will be your main POC through which you will receive answers to all of your questions. Your project manager is expected to build up a detailed knowledge of your product. Don’t be surprised if our project managers ask a lot of probing questions or suggest regular site visits. This is all done to avoid complications down the line and ensure they build up the most accurate picture of your business, your requirements and your outsourcing strategy.
Supply Chain Set Up
We should already have a detailed understanding of parts of your supply chain at this stage. It’s important that you are honest and open about the state of your supply chain. It often makes sense, in the long run, to hand over full control of your supply chain to us. But we understand you may not want to go down this route. There are alternatives, however. The first logical step is to continue using some of your current suppliers during the transition period.
You could retain full control over your supply chain which means continuing to buy materials from your incumbent suppliers. It is also possible to nominate your preferred key suppliers to us and we can work directly with them, however, in this scenario, you could still find yourself responsible for top-level supplier management reviews their on-going performance. We do ask that you tell us any future purchase commitments you already have in place along with other vital pieces of information.
Material Inspection
Once the goods start to arrive, our logistics team will inspect each item against our internal standards and procedures. Our material inspection process can be broadly divided into two categories:
Electrical components
​We want to ascertain whether something is what it’s meant to be - the right part, the right quantity and the correct revision - and the paperwork, labels, date codes and external packaging all match our expectations. If we are unable to source your material in time, due to obsolescence or allocations, we will discuss options with you. We believe it’s vital to be transparent with you and if we need to source material outside of franchise we will always let you know in advance.
Electro-mechanical parts
All made-to-print items such as printed circuit boards (PCBs), metalwork and plastics are inspected against their drawings. Working closely with a range of customers and suppliers, we have developed our own cosmetics specification document that we can share with you. All material that passes inspection is booked into our system, given a unique batch code
Data
In order to produce your initial quote, we will have already received some form of build pack from you with all of the data pertaining to your product. But a lack of data, or incorrect data, can impact production and delivery times significantly. The more detailed documentation you provide, the smoother and easier the whole exercise will be.
Tests
The earlier in the manufacturing process you find faults, the easier and less expensive they are to repair. Ideally, we’d like to carry out all of your testing requirements in-house, but you may not be ready to hand over this function immediately. We will work with you to devise the best strategy.
NPI
During this time, one of our NPI engineers will oversee all stages associated with assembly, test and outbound logistics. These steps are barcoded and then linked back to an operator once they complete them for traceability purposes.
Logistics consideration
It’s important not to overlook outbound logistics in the early stage of your outsourcing. The amount of responsibility you choose to hand over to use exists on a spectrum. To gain the most value, it really is worth considering choosing an end-to-end manufacturer solution, whereby CPC send your tested products direct to the end-user OEMs who outsource a small part of an assembly, customisation test, packing and shipping are only benefitting from some of the savings and efficiencies of outsourcing.