What Do You Ask When Looking for Factory Design Consultants?
What do you ask when looking for factory design consultants?
In addition to their expertise, your relationship with your factory design consultants is the most critical piece to successful delivery of your factory designs to achieve your project goals.
So what then are the most critical questions to ask when selecting your factory design partners?
After thousands of conversations and successfully completed projects, we have identified the two most common questions asked by clients when looking for the factory design consultants with whom they want to work.
1. Where are you based?
This seems like a very fair question, and a seemingly very simple one to answer. It is the reason WHY the question is asked, however, that is infinitely more important.
The very short but very accurate answer is that it simply shouldn’t matter where your factory design firm is located. Their office location should in no way impact you or your projects and nor should it factor into any consideration when choosing your Factory Design partner.
Most of the work completed by Factory Design consultants, as well as their communications with clients, should be expertly and effectively achieved online and remotely. This is true for clients who are located close by as well as interstate, or even further afield internationally
Of course, regular face to face meetings are made more possible if a client is close by however, they are neither more efficient, nor more necessary than the online communications and modern technology available to us all.
“It is infinitely more important to get the right service than it is to get a convenient service”
2. What do you do?
1. Factory Design is not a showy profession, there are no big shiny products, robotics or machines to show or promote. Factory design is not about showing the impressive looking parts of a factory. It is about making those impressive shiny products, robotics, machines and technology work in harmony to achieve your factory output and project requirements.
Factory Design is a truly complex and interwoven service, offered by very few, but essential to ensuring that all the separate parts contained within your factory or plant can work together to achieve your desired production, output efficiency outcomes.
As humans, we want to see things to understand them but the best way to understand what it is that your factory design consultants do is to ask for previous project case studies and to learn of the capabilities of their combined team. This way, you will be confident that what your factory design consultants do is fit for your purpose and will best support your projects goals.
2. As there are so many facets to Factory Design, there are very few companies who cover and offer the entire gamut of Factory Design services.
Ideally, you would be able to talk with your consultants about literally any aspect of your Factory Design and they would be able to assist in all areas required. If they are unable to demonstrate their expertise across the full range of factory design capabilities, they may simply not be the best fit for you and your project.
A simple analogy is to consider all aspects of your factory or plant as puzzle pieces and your ideal factory design consultants as those who put the puzzle together to form the whole.
3. As a CEO, or a business owner, your role is to expand and optimise your operations; your role is to ensure the business and the sales pipeline is robust and future proofed; your role is to ensure your customers’ needs are met; your role is to concentrate on production expansion. Your role is not to be an expert in Factory Design and therefore it is an entirely legitimate question to ask what it is that your factory design consultants can do for you.
Whether you’re about to outgrow your current facility, are looking to gain some much-needed efficiencies or your current production will be reaching capacity in the next two years, talk to the team at CDE Factory Design about your factory design problem now.
Over 20 years of factory design experience across the full range of factory design services, with a broad spectrum of industries, in both domestic and international locations means that your next factory design project will be in the safest hands possible.
Starting to think about your next project? Talk to us today.
^ Originally published in Food & Drink Business Magazine | April/May 2024