Due to more businesses wanting to complement their in-house skills with outside experts, engineering consulting services have seen a considerable rise in demand lately. Most engineering consulting services are offered by engineering consulting firms and provided by sole practitioners with the expertise required by organizations. These consulting companies vary greatly in size and expertise; some offering a wide range of experienced design engineers, analysts, and manufacturing engineers, while others are limited to a specific area of expertise.
Why do companies use consultants for engineering? Depending on the firm, the reasons will differ very significantly. There are fewer, more closely knit permanent employees and greater reliance on teaming partners and consultants in the management style emerging today. Thus, they frequently have to go outside the business to get the required expertise when organizations take on projects where engineering expertise is needed. Some companies prefer to exploit an engineering consultant’s capabilities for particular aspects of their product development programs, while others rely on outside information from beginning to end.
During the design process of product creation, businesses may need the outside support of an engineering consultant. Many companies do not employ the breadth of staff within mechanical, electrical, software, and industrial designs to accommodate technologies’ requirements. An engineering services company, on the other hand, would likely have access to this variety of expertise.
In the actual prototyping or production of a product, another place where companies may need outside assistance is. The most time-consuming and complex, this stage of product development requires many working hours with diverse skill sets. While some businesses will attempt to do this in-house, other companies realize that companies can experience missed revenue due to a delay in bringing the product to market. Using an outside engineering contractor may significantly speed up the process.
In particular, the manufacturing of a product poses a significant challenge for businesses focused on product growth. While a larger organization may have the in-house experience to manage the design, documentation and maybe even prototyping of a new product design, it presents many companies a unique challenge. A consultant in engineering services will help develop all the infrastructure and supplier networks required.
Some of these efforts include any or all of the below:
- Identifying raw materials vendors
- Identifying ideal vendors to manufacture product components
- Identifying vendor for assembly and testing
- Creating quality control specifications for the various components/assembly of the product
- Identifying warehousing and distribution centers.
During the final phases of product growth, manufacturing consultancy can prove invaluable for a company. It will make sense to determine what resources you have in the house before you start and identify what skills you may need to look for in an engineering consultant if you are a company considering undertaking product creation.
If you’re unsure whether your organization needs outside engineering services expertise, ask your team the following:
1. What kind of timeframe are you looking at for this project?
Although you may already have the in-house experience to manage all aspects of product creation, you may need to go beyond the organization to maximize resources to complete the project promptly, a tight deadline that requires so many resources.
2. What kind of expertise will you need for this project?
Seeing a product development project from design to production involves a significant range of experience, as described above. Do you have someone who can do the design of a product? What about design documentation? Will you have in-house prototyping capabilities? Before beginning a product development project, knowing resources is essential.
3. Do you have the capacity to hire in-house talent?
Does it make sense to recruit an employee for this initiative if product creation is not a daily priority of your company or makes more sense to allow for resource flexibility by hiring an engineering services consultant?
More and more companies recognize the importance of consultants in engineering services and, as a consequence, appreciate the advantages of engaging in the creative product design without the limitations of limited resources.
