How to outsource mass production over the long term ?

⚡ Long-term electronic production challenges

Several specific problems arise when it comes to ensuring electronic production over the long term:

• Component shortages: Manufacturers must anticipate material needs and manage inventory carefully.
• Constant innovation: to remain competitive, players in the sector must constantly innovate and adapt their production processes to new technologies.

🦾 Solutions for sustainable electronic production

1. Faced with these challenges, several strategies and solutions can be implemented:
2. Use recycled or sustainably sourced materials to limit environmental impact
3. Invest in research and development to design more reliable and less energy-intensive products
4. Anticipate the redesign: To deal with the obsolescence of a product or its components and extend its marketing life, the redesign is essential but rarely anticipated
5. Optimize obsolescence management with Design for Purchasing
6. Optimize production processes using digital and automated tools (AI, robotics)
7. Ensure regular maintenance of equipment to avoid breakdowns and extend their lifespan
8. Train teams in good industrial practices and new technologies

📐 Design phase: pillar of the sustainability of electronic products

The design of an electronic product is the first crucial step to ensure its sustainability. Here’s how you can ensure your product’s sustainable design: 

1. 1. Choosing quality components: Opt for high-quality electronic components from the start. Lower quality components can lead to early failures and high repair costs.
       
   2. Modular design: A modular design allows specific parts to be easily replaced without having to rebuild the entire product. This makes updates easier and extends the life of the product.

   3. Anticipation of redesign: Build into the design room for future improvements, whether software updates, new features or better energy efficiency. 

By thinking about the future-proofing of your product from the start, you reduce maintenance costs, promote continuous innovation and meet changing market expectations.

🤝🏻 Choosing the right production partner

It is essential to work with an electronic production partner who emphasizes quality, reliability and offers a tailor-made offer. Such a partner must be able to:

1. Take into account the specificities of the project and propose adapted solutions
2. Support the customer throughout the life of the electronic product
3. Guarantee rigorous monitoring of industrial and environmental standards

💡 What resources does LACROIX make available to the companies it supports?

✍️ Redesign: anticipating, preventing, controlling, etc.

Our multidisciplinary teams take charge of re-design in all its dimensions:

1. Identification of soon-to-be obsolete components by constant monitoring of the roadmaps of our manufacturing partners,
2. Working closely with our purchasing force to optimize costs,
3. Mastery of contingencies linked to the integration or re-design of the software, certifications, etc.

When our teams detect an opportunity to integrate more modern technologies, we inform the companies we support, always taking into account the constraints linked to production volume.

This 360° vision of the redesign constitutes our best promise of long-term production to maximize cost control.

🏷️Design for purchasing: optimizing obsolescence management

Technology is evolving very quickly, and issues of competitiveness are enormous. This leads to finding the best balance between newness and security: technological security in the sense of reliability and security of supplies.

This ongoing dialogue that we are engaged in with engineering offices, right from the design phase, contributes to finding the ideal compromise.

In order to do so, we rely on a unique database that allows us to identify technological equivalences and deal with levels of risk related to obsolescence, availability, or further risks of future incompatibility in relation to environmental regulations.

The critical nature of our mission has been highlighted, once again, by the shortages that resulted from the health crisis.

Our knowledge of our supplier ecosystem, mastery of technological issues and perfect integration with the LACROIX engineering office allowed us to deal with this situation.

Ensuring the durability of your electronic products, while remaining competitive in an ever-changing world, is essential. Redesign, sustainable design, management of obsolescence and the choice of reliable partners are all keys to your long-term success. To find out more about these subjects and discover detailed advice, we invite you to consult our complete guide, “Successfully outsourcing your electronic product from design to manufacturing”