The challenge of maintaining quality in custom product manufacturing
For many manufacturers, ensuring consistent design quality and regulatory compliance are key requirements. Selling custom products that meet different quality and safety standards, depending on how they’re used and where they’re sold, can be complex. Regulations and standards vary locally and internationally, so manufacturers need to meet different customer requirements confidently and consistently.
However, the more product variations you offer, the more difficult it becomes to maintain quality and accuracy. Each new product configuration increases the risk of:
- Design errors
- Inconsistent product quality
- Rework and production delays
- Quote errors
- Non-compliance with industry standards and regulations
Why design consistency matters
For manufacturers of custom products, maintaining design consistency across different products, sectors, and countries is critical for product quality and customer satisfaction. Consistent design quality promotes trust, reduces errors and rework, and lowers production costs.
Design consistency enables manufacturers to:
- Improve product quality
- Streamline engineering processes
- Minimize errors
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Comply with industry standards and regulations
Using design automation to protect product quality
Design automation technology helps to ensure that quality isn’t sacrificed as product complexity increases.
Design automation solutions use engineering knowledge and design and quality rules to automatically generate designs that meet pre-defined quality requirements for every product configuration.
Design and quality rules are automatically applied for every custom product, reducing the risk of human error and speeding up design and sales cycles.
Maintaining quality and compliance across different regions
Many manufacturers sell across multiple industries, regions, and countries, each with their own particular regulatory requirements. This can be challenging to manage, and the risk of non-compliance increases with complex custom products.
Embedding regulatory requirements directly into design automation rules ensures that every configured product meets the relevant regional standards. Manufacturers can confidently deliver quality products without the risk of errors or compliance issues.
Enabling sales teams to sell valid product configurations
Ensuring quality relies on sales teams having the tools to make valid product configurations.
Rules-based configuration, as part of a guided selling CPQ solution, ensures that every option presented to the user is technically feasible, manufacturable, and compliant. This prevents specification errors, improves quote accuracy, and ensures sales teams can confidently sell custom products that meet quality standards.
How DriveWorks enables manufacturers to deliver quality custom products
Using DriveWorks design automation, product configuration, and CPQ technology, manufacturers can confidently deliver custom products that meet customer requirements, comply with regulations, and maintain consistently high quality.
Using DriveWorks, manufacturers of custom products can:
- Standardize design processes
- Automate repetitive design tasks
- Embed quality and compliance rules
- Reduce errors and rework
- Deliver accurate custom products faster
Real-world example: Managing compliance for steel doors
Using DriveWorks technology, EBD ensures their products meet both local regulations and international standards.
EBD is based in the UK and specializes in manufacturing and supplying bespoke steel doors that meet the highest standards of performance, compliance, and functionality. With key clients worldwide, they take pride in their ability to accompany their clients through every step of the process, from the early stages of design to when the door is delivered and installed on site.
Using DriveWorks, we can easily control all aspects of the door that are affected by these standards (such as limiting the size of the door and selecting ironmongery and other door furniture based on previous selections). This ensures that the design output is fully compliant with these standards and that all the design rules are applied.
Design Manager, EBD Steel Doors
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