Choosing the Right Manufacturing Partner: Engineering Resources

This is the first in a series of articles focused on what qualities you should look for when choosing a manufacturing partner. This post covers the key characteristics that set apart quality engineering resources. Choosing an organization that can not only manufacture your custom product, but also be an extension of your engineering team can be of tremendous value to you and your customers.

Engineering Expertise

Every business is unique just like every project is unique.  Products designed for the aerospace and defense industry will have different requirements and needs than products designed for the medical or the automotive industry. Because of these differences, industry knowledge and engineering expertise are required when designing a unique component, product, or packaging solution. It is important to align yourself with a manufacturing partner that has a deep understanding of your industry.

Filtration, for example, is a common application used as a component of products across many industries. For the medical device industry, designing filter components for blood oxygenators requires expert knowledge of medical grade materials, a thorough understanding of the medical industry and its regulations, and experience in creating filters for medical devices. In contrast, creating a filtration product for the automotive industry requires experience in designing filters for air, oil or other liquids, the knowledge of specific materials that can withstand these common particulates as well as heat from an engine, and knowledge of the automotive industry and its specific regulations. Although in the end the two filtration components may look similar, there are stark differences that were taken into account during the design and engineering phase.

Companies gain solid industry knowledge through researching trends, new materials, designing countless unique products, and working closely with their customers.  At UFP Technologies, this is how we serve our customers. About 10 percent of our staff is dedicated to engineering with an average tenure of 12 years. Our engineers are divided into teams that focus on the specific industries that we serve including medical, automotive, aerospace & defense, packaging, and industrial.  We are driven by innovation to remain on the cutting edge of new materials. With 50 years of experience, we have developed relationships with a wide range of material suppliers.  Through our these suppliers we have access to thousands of unique materials including high performance and specialty materials that are limited in distribution. Through collaboration, our engineers work with one another to strive for further innovation in each design they produce. Our engineers will work directly with our customers and are familiar with the standards and regulations of the industries in which they support.

To learn more about engineering capabilities as well as our manufacturing operations, please visit: https://ufpt.com/capabilities/