Touring Your Manufacturer’s Facility: What are the Benefits?

 Is your converter secretly one guy in a garage? Probably not, but facility tours can still be a priceless opportunity to see the machines up close and hear your converter explain how their different processes work. 

Tours are critical to fostering customer relationships by demonstrating a company’s existing capabilities. This article will help you determine when facility tours are necessary and how to get the most out of future ones.

The 5 Benefits of Touring Your Manufacturer’s Facility

I was in D.C. with a friend for the Cherry Blossom Festival when we spotted a food truck selling cold drinks. I didn’t think twice about ordering mango tea, but as the man began pouring me a cup of plain coffee creamer, I realized we’d made a terrible mistake. Thinking back to the incident, I can now spot the dozens of warning signs I’d ignored—namely that every other truck had a long line, while this ice cream truck was empty. However, in the simmering heat, I’d trusted them because they’d written “TEA” on the side in big, bold letters.

Ordering from a flexible material converter without seeing the facility is like buying food from an unknown source: you’ll get something, but it might not be exactly what’s written on the menu. Facility tours help prove whether the manufacturing service is worth the cost to your company before you place an order.

1. VERIFY MACHINES AND EQUIPMENT

When investing in another company, you’ll want to have the utmost faith in its ability to deliver on time. Verifying the machines and equipment of a converter is the first step to checking their capability claims and building trust in the legitimacy of their business.

There’s a considerable difference between owning a single rotary die cut press and owning multiple presses. This matters because, depending on where you are in the process, your project requires different levels of capability. Plus, many businesses benefit from planning their production scaling early.

DECIDING WHO GOES ON THE TOUR

The company members you send on the tour will likely depend on where you are in the cycle; for example, if you’re designing for current projects, it could be helpful to bring your technical team. Meanwhile, if you already have a product planned, you might want to include your logistics or purchasing team.

2. OBSERVE FACTORY CONDITIONS

Nobody wants products built in filthy conditions, yet many people order from manufacturers without ever seeing the inside of their factory. Granted, cleanliness is a much higher priority for certain products than for others, since medical or food-related products may need to be produced and stored in sterile environments. When walking through the factory, consider:

• Overall cleanliness
• Organization
• Material storage
• Safety measures
• Waste disposal.

Observe the condition of their facility, including their inventory, to determine whether your contact can safely store your materials and products. Plus, seeing how the workflow is set up offers insight into their operations and raises questions about inter-team coordination.

Lastly, ask if your converter has immediate expansion plans. It could be a good sign if they’re building or renovating their facilities or actively adding members to their team. If your converter is steadily progressing as a company and becoming a leader in their respective field, this has positive implications for the work they’ll be doing for you.

3. MEET WITH YOUR CONTACTS

Meeting contacts in person is vital to building trust and understanding how they operate and manage your project. It also helps you form a better relationship and rapport. You can gauge a great deal about a company's culture from employees’ willingness to offer clear, insightful answers to your questions.

4. INSPECT THEIR PRODUCTION OPERATIONS

Receiving samples in the mail is all well and good, but it’s different from seeing a converter build parts in real-time. Watching rolls of material become products as part of a 1-pass production process will confirm that the machines are operational and that a converter knows how to set them up (arguably one of the most difficult aspects of flexible material converting) and to build parts daily.

5. REFLECT ON YOUR OWN PROJECT

Touring a manufacturing facility causes customers to reflect on their own project needs. Naturally, you can rest assured that any product information you reveal will be strictly confidential if your converter suggests a mutual NDA. Strouse insists upon a mutual NDA before anyone enters our facilities to preserve the confidentiality of our processes and protect the details of any product, process, or material information you wish to discuss.

At the end of the day, the question is: what are YOU hoping to get out of this? If you’re willing to travel to visit our facility, we want to make sure you get to speak with whomever you’re hoping to speak with and see what you’d like to see.

If you’re hoping to make the most of your tour, it’s useful to warn your converter and let them know about your project or the capabilities you want to see. You might be worried that mentioning a specific ability will narrow a converter’s focus too much. From our perspective, it simply gives us a more precise idea of what to show you and how to frame our conversations to make them more useful to you.

Even if your tour guide focuses on specific capabilities, sometimes just seeing the other machines and hearing about your options can spark ideas for your product or manufacturing process.

An Observation Guide For Manufacturing Tours

Should I Tour My Manufacturer’s Facility?

No matter the outcome, you’ll always have a better idea of whether you should work with a particular manufacturer after touring their facility. In fact, even if you’ve been to a facility before, it can be beneficial to return every few years to discuss your current projects, observe the changes it's undergone, and ensure your converter still follows good manufacturing practices.

MANUFACTURING TOUR DOWNSIDES

The main downside to touring a manufacturer’s facility is determining when a tour is necessary and potentially incurring travel costs to visit a nonviable option. If the cost of travel is too much, or you don’t have enough time, there are other ways to qualify the legitimacy of a converter. For instance, you could look online at reviews to see what other people are saying, or use Google Street View to see the appearance of the address and gauge its size.

POSSIBLE TOUR OUTCOMES

There are three main outcomes of taking a factory tour:

1. The manufacturer has your desired equipment and capabilities.
2. They DON’T have the equipment and capabilities you want.
3. There are some capabilities, but you want to find a better fit.

If you can afford the travel costs, and you’re at the point of asking the question, “Should I tour this facility?” the answer is probably yes, you should request a tour.

Every manufacturer has limitations, and touring their facility is a straightforward way to visit, ask questions, and better understand where they focus primarily and how they’re expanding in the current market.

Are you interested in witnessing Strouse’s manufacturing capabilities up close and personal? We’d love to have you! Contact us to schedule a tour.

Originally published: April 18, 2023