Why Quality Should Decide Your Contract Manufacturer
Poor quality comes back as lost time, returns and customers who do not buy again.
Buyers are often trained to look for more for less. But 50 items for $50 are worth little if they are poorly made, and one or two items that are made well, for the same $50, are often the better buy. The same math applies when you choose a contract manufacturer to build your electronics.
Quality Saves Time
Many American companies have moved production overseas to build more units at a lower cost, and some have found they traded quality for quantity along the way. Often the decision came down to the unit price alone.
Building overseas also means longer shipping. That matters most when the products arrive with defects: first a long wait for the shipment, then months more while the errors are corrected, all spent waiting on products that may still be mediocre. A local assembly partner takes the long shipping legs out of that cycle.
A contract manufacturer with quality built into its processes keeps that time from going into products you cannot take to market.
Quality Keeps Customers Coming Back
A customer who buys a poor or merely average product may not think well of the product or the company, and may not buy from either again. A product that holds up gives the same customer a reason to buy a second and third time.
Quality Avoids Returns and Complaints
A manufacturer whose processes are not built around quality can deliver products below what you expected, and those products come back. The long-standing model behind the American Customer Satisfaction Index, developed at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, treats perceived quality as a driver of customer satisfaction. In that model, higher satisfaction means fewer complaints and more customers who buy from the same supplier again.
Returns cost money, and complaints cost value when they show up online in reviews, product ratings and social media. Choosing a manufacturer whose processes are built around quality keeps both as low as possible.
Quality Shows in the Product
Buyers often judge quality by how a product looks, feels and sounds. In a 1987 Harvard Business Review article, David Garvin counted aesthetics among eight dimensions of quality on which companies compete. How a product is made, and what it is made of, shapes how it sells: good design and a good build both influence the purchase decision.
Quality at Kodiak
When you choose a contract manufacturer for a product headed to market, quality should decide the choice, ahead of the lowest quote. Kodiak’s 2018 quality policy committed the company to meeting customer requirements by understanding what each customer needs and continuously improving its processes and procedures.