How CAD Outsourcing Reduces Product Development Costs

1Eliminate costly rework

Design and conceptual errors lead to frequent rework, extended timelines and wasted resources. If these dimensional or design errors, even when measurements are off by miniscule margins, carry over to manufacturing, the product does not meet expectations. The part drawings have to be partially or fully scrapped and the team goes back to the drawing board. All this costs you a fortune.

When you partner with CAD outsourcing experts, all drawing revisions are made during the drafting process at their end. What you receive for manufacturing are those that are finalized with dimensional accuracy and precision. This reduces chances of errors, delays due to rework and costs incurred on scrapping faulty products.

2Ease of hiring and training skilled resources

Acquiring requisite drafting skills for creating CAD drawings is a herculean task. While resources are scarce, the learning curve is also very steep. Hiring the right talent and training them on your projects is tedious and cost intensive.

Offshore CAD drafting companies have at their command, skills encompassing a huge range of domains and technologies. This is because the nature of their work requires them to partner with manufacturers from multiple streams and markets. Your partnership with these CAD outsourcing firms gives you access to experience, 3D modeling expertise and versatile CAD drafting and 3D rendering skills with no additional investment on hiring and training.

3Time zone advantage for faster turnaround time

Product manufacturers getting all CAD engineering work done in-house, normally operate from a single time zone to have full team work during business hours. The non-working hours are not utilized. Finding a workaround for this can significantly shrink your timelines.

In an increasingly shrinking world, time zone differences are being leveraged by engineering companies to reduce turnaround times. Collaborating with a CAD partner operating from a different time zone helps manufacturing companies capitalize on maximum hours of the day.

Your design engineers work during the day and at day end, they send the rough drawings to their offshore partners, operating from a different time zone. By the time they reach their desk the next morning, they’re likely to have received detailed design layouts corresponding to their 2D sketches.

4Allows focus on core activities of business importance

Production heads often get caught up in activities they don’t really know much about, and in the process lose sight of what’s really important to them. Getting into the nitty gritties of mechanical drafting and drawings isn’t something that most of them would want to get into. They’d rather focus on shop floor operations, increasing product quality and enhancing customer experience than working with structural and design layouts.

Outsourcing CAD projects to reliable business partners with domain expertise takes a lot off the plate for production managers. It enables them to focus on their core activities such as production and R&D for upcoming products.

5Scalability of resources

The manufacturing industry often faces production peaks and valleys. However, all engineering firms, manufacturers and fabricators hire just enough resources for meeting an average demand. This causes problems when the production demand rises; the volume of CAD drawings also increases and resources fall short in meeting them. Alternatively, when the production market dips, you end up over spending on extra CAD drafters, CAD software licenses and so much more.

When you outsource your design or drafting needs, you get to hire CAD drafters only as per your drafting project requirements. As the demand changes or the project work volume varies, you can easily ramp-up or ramp-down the number of hired engineers.

A man-month or a project based engagement helps you save hugely on costs as you are not liable for payment when the project work volume is low.