With the increased need for innovative product designs, industrial engineers and architects are occupied with design optimization. Today, design professionals have reached a stage where they have to juggle through numerous projects at any given time owing to increasingly taut deadlines and competition.
Many engineering and architectural design companies have joined the foray of outsourcing business to countries like India. Engineering design companies seek assistance from outsourcing CAD drafting companies for 3D modeling and CAD drafting. The association is beneficial to these companies as they have to pay the fees at hourly or monthly rates. In last two decades, outsourcing services have proved their worth of bring very reliable and cost effective; especially when there is a bulk of designs work.
However, before outsourcing your work, it is your responsibilities to evaluate several parameters of the CAD outsourcing company with whom you are partnering for design support solutions. It may make or break your business reputation, clients and your relationship with your customers and more importantly- your market value.
Evaluate the Probability of Outsourcing
‘Research’ here essentially means that finding out the necessity to outsource CAD work. Being a design company it is obvious that your engineers and architects are involved in recreating the existing designs to make better ones with innovations and suit the changing market needs. It thus goes without saying that drafting and modeling for them isn’t a very economical option. On the contrary, outsourcing usually turns out to be an economically viable option in terms of time management, quality, costs and business operations.
Once your design firm or your CAD team is ready to coordinate with outsourcing services, you need to find the best CAD outsourcing firm. We, at CAD Outsourcing Services, have partnered with numerous industrial product design engineers, architects, manufacturing firms and contractors for 2D & 3D CAD drafts, drawings, and models. From our experience of more than 25 years, we share a few things that best of our clients looked for before hiring us. It also is about what we focused on for becoming one of the leading CAD outsourcing service providers from India.
#1: Right communication with the outsourcing partner
Need for a seamless communication lays the foundation for developing efficient CAD projects.
When offshore CAD drafters are in touch with the right contact person it helps them to know the exact requirements. However severe is the design complexity, if the design intent is communicated well with the CAD drafter, what emerges is a quality product. (A CAD model as well as final physical product)
Also, the engineer or architect at the design company too can take right decisions, convey their design intent with the inputs provided, and provide the right set of information that is missing. A small tip is to ensure that designs/drafting follow same standards. Anything communicated should be documented over the email which makes it easier to track the inputs, challenges, and/or revisions.
#2: Gauging the portfolios
Although the real value of judging the CAD outsourcing company lies in the process, there is a huge necessity to evaluate the companies with the kind of work they have delivered in the past. It will essentially shed light on the capabilities of their drafters and CAD managers and how well they can deal with the rising complexity of designs.
In fact, proper scrutiny of case studies, portfolio pages and client database too up to a certain extent, will drive you to a conclusion of where the drafting company inclined is and what their fortes are. This helps you segregate the projects that you need to send them across. Be it industrial, architectural, furniture designs or machinery products, you’ll be able to identify the expertise of the company and verify if that aligns with your needs.
#3: Comparing cost always matters
When outsourcing is seen as an option for cost cutting, how can the CAD managers eliminate to weigh the fees of the outsourcing company and compare it with the competitors? But the catch here is not only to compare the costs, but the quality against the fees charged is.
CAD drafters at outsourcing companies are competent with multiple CAD software. But the ones having dedicated teams for each software, AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks, or Creo or any other; are the ones that usually possess excellence. It is like the CAD drafter would have gained efficiency in operating a certain CAD tool over the years and can deliver quality.
Simultaneously, since the offshore CAD design support partners charge their fees at an hourly rate or monthly rate you only have to pay for the volume of work you outsource clearly mentioned in proposals. This spares you from outsourcing every bit of design and can prepare parts in-house to save costs.
#4: Go through you agreements duly
Designs are the governing factor for any architectural firm or manufacturing company’s success. If they are leaked, it’s the entire intelligence that is at stake. So while you outsource your designs to an external party, you are inevitably sharing your personal information, organizational identity and of course the designs. Hence, you need to ensure that they have a very acutely designed privacy policy and adhere to it.
Ideally, offshore CAD partners sign a non-disclosure agreement [NDAs] with their clients. Make sure you do that before sending your designs and how strict are they in adhering to it. Secondly, a thorough background check of the external company will throw hints to how well do they follow those agreements.
Next is the design revision that needs special attention. Your CAD outsourcing service provider should clarify if they would entertain the design and drawing changes as recommended by your design engineer or manufacturer without extra charges apart from the initial changes. This is because ECOs originating from shop floor are inevitable if the tool isn’t available or broken.
#5: Get to know the company
Anything about the offshore company’s reputation will tell you the authenticity of their drafters and engineers. There are multiple corporate social media platforms that give information about the company’s reputation in addition to their website. Check those, scrutinize it, show how well they serve their clients, and go through client testimonial which holds the credibility of the work.
These are some of the factors our leasing clients including design engineers, manufacturing firms, contractors, architects, architectural consultants and product design firms search for before they share their projects with us. We ensure to serve our clients well and very well ensure that all these factors are in place for each of our clients.
To partner us for you next CAD design or drafting project reach out to us at info@cadoutsourcingservices.com and our CAD managers will contact you at the earliest.
