In order to ensure your manufacturing company’s success in speed-to-market, determine the location or locations that best meet your needs.
When technology and economic globalization started erasing geographic boundaries in the 1990’s, white collar professions such as engineering began to follow manufacturers offshore. Although they achieved their goal of lowering the cost of talent and increasing engineering capacity, the current challenges of product engineering go beyond cost arbitrage and capacity augmentation. Shorter product development lifecycles, increased used of embedded systems, rapid technological advancement, shrinking R&D budgets and rising consumer demand for greater product functionality are driving today’s engineering needs, and strategies that rely solely on offshoring are leading to deterioration in client service, work quality and communication.
Perhaps the most intractable downfall, however, has been a negative impact on speed to market, the coin of the realm in the highly competitive race to release new products. Consumer expectations regarding product functionality, user experience and connectivity are higher than ever before, and getting the “latest and greatest” product to market first returns a significant reward. Conversely, each second-to-market product results in an opportunity cost that can’t be recouped.
Because of this, world-class engineering teams are increasingly opting for a hybrid strategy that leverages the benefits of offshore, domestic/near-site and onsite options to create the most optimal solution for each process or product. This strategy is called “right-shoring” — when a business analyzes and understands the complexity and strategic value of required tasks, deploying its resources and focusing its efforts in optimized arrangements that provide the best combination of cost, quality and efficiency.
Companies seeking solely to cut costs through offshoring were narrowly focused on the bottom line. In contrast, right-shoring drives growth by increasing the top line. Companies capture market share and increase revenue, more than compensating for investments associated with improving the speed and quality of their engineering operation.
Define the scope of the workCase study: A multinational biotechnology company faced potential loss of skilled talent due to tenure limits, which would have had a significant impact on its product development capabilities. To mitigate co-employment risks and the loss of trained consultants and continue its successful record of product development and maintenance, EASi transitioned and deployed managed resources in a variety of areas, including:
Our program supports this customer’s product development efforts by providing a stable engineering workforce and extending its internal engineering bandwidth.
Managed deliverablesCase study: Our client, a multinational technology company, needs to stay on top of a very competitive industry. For its non-production cloud environment requirements, the client was looking to extend its management bandwidth and support ongoing development activities more efficiently.
EASi established a managed service program and built a non-production lab environment to support the client’s Engineering Cloud Services business unit. To provide streamlined support and project infrastructure, we transitioned consultants from five different vendors to a consolidated structure using a communication and implementation plan based on best practices. We scaled this team as needed, providing full screening, interviewing, selection and onboarding support for increased scopes of work.
Applying industry best practices to our transition process resulted in no disruption to operations or consultant pay and a 100 percent retention rate, enabling the client to consolidate this team to a single supplier and reduce operational inefficiency through a managed service model.
The client was able to efficiently complete the following activities through project ramp-down by outsourcing them to our delivery organization:
This enabled management to focus on core business requirements and strategy during times of change.
Full outsourcingCase study: Our client is a premier manufacturer of dash assemblies and wiring harnesses, primarily for boat manufacturers. During its busy season, its small engineering team becomes stretched thin with a high volume of product update requests, such as updating gauges or displays and standardizing components.
To extend its engineering enterprise, EASi provided a blended delivery model including domestic delivery center support for customer service, project management and quality assurance, and offshore support to drive cost efficiency and capacity for electrical drawing, board layout harness and harness fixtures design requirements.
Because of the time difference, EASi’s offshore operations were able to maximize engineering capacity and turn around deliverables by the beginning of the next U.S. business day. Our approach eliminated the client’s backlog of work while maintaining its very high quality standards, completing 344 work packages that included 2D harness drawings, quality audit check sheets and updated bills of material (BOM).
Contingent laborCase study: Our client, a global designer and builder of connected products, was facing a significant increase in the amount of work. Because the work requirements fluctuated, the client didn’t want to hire additional permanent full-time staff to support the projects.
EASi, which had established a strong relationship with the client, brought in Aerotek. In addition to being able to fill the client’s immediate staffing need, Aerotek also created and implemented an ongoing, sustainable strategy for onboarding specific skill sets and technical talent to serve the evolving needs of the client’s business model. Working with Aerotek and EASi provides this client the resources readily available to deliver on the client’s engineering needs and partner on the initiatives driving their business.
Access the accompanying infographic for a fuller discussion of the parameters, benefits and risk points of each model.
As the needs of businesses advance, the ways of accomplishing the work that needs to be done are also evolving. EASi specializes in providing consultative solutions based on a thorough examination of your needs and strategy. Often, this results in a hybrid method that incorporates onshore, offshore and offsite locations, as it has with these current EASi clients:Our expertise is in creating the right solution, in the right location, to meet your needs and help drive your business forward. Want to learn more? Contact EASi now.
