Electronics manufacturing has advanced at an incredible rate over the past decade or so and the industry shows no signs of slowing down. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering how much technology has advanced, which has led to the need for more electronic products in general. This has also led to the birth of many different new electronic manufacturers as well as new challenges. The following are five of the biggest challenges that new electronics manufacturers, in particular, will need to overcome.
- Turning a profit with declining prices – New technology is making a lot of electronics products much cheaper to produce. Combined with the fact that there are way more electronics manufacturers than ever before, operating margins are becoming slimmer. Essentially, in order to turn a profit, you’ll need to make sure that your manufacturing process is as cost-effective as possible.
- Tracking a complicated supply chain – It’s becoming increasingly rare for electronics manufacturers to produce every component in-house. It’s more efficient to outsource components or subcomponents to help reduce operational burdens. However, this means that many of your components may be going through numerous points in the supply chain before ever reaching the consumer. This leads to a challenge in traceability and maintaining compliance with international standards.
- Maintaining quality management – Supplier quality management is becoming more important due to the use of the global supply chain. Your warranty reserve and post-production service hours will be affected by your quality and traceability system.
- Keeping up with demand – Electronic products have shorter lifecycles due to how fast the average consumer’s preferences and tastes evolve in this day and age. It means that you need to be ready to introduce new product processes at the drop of a hat. To ensure that you are able to do this, you will need closed-loop communication between your sales, engineering, and manufacturing departments. Otherwise, you’ll have serious difficulties in launching new products on time and meeting the demand for those products. Powerful systems like the SLC 500 controller and CotrolLogix can be very helpful with making the manufacturing process faster, thus ensuring you’re able to work smoothly and keep up with the demand.
- Being environmentally responsible – More and more sustainability regulations and standards are being enforced every year, thereby forcing manufacturers to consider the complete product lifecycle when making decisions. One of the biggest concerns when it comes to sustainability in the electronics manufacturing industry is e-waste. You’ll need to think about how your products will be disposed of after they are no longer in use and how they will impact the environment once they’ve reached the end of their expected life cycle.
There has never been a bigger demand for the electronics products and components being manufactured today; however, this has led to the birth of even more new manufacturers as well as new challenges that must be met. These are five of the biggest challenges facing electronics manufacturers within the industry today.
