Choosing the wrong manufacturer could result in delays, cost overruns, legal problems, and a blow to your business.  You have a lot on the line so be careful in your choise of manufacturer for your product.  These are some of the things you should examine when choosing a manufacturer.

-  Develop a list of potential manufacturers that can produce your product.  Streamline it down to a short list that you can approach.  Use requirements such as geographical location, manufacturing capacity, verify the legal existence of the company, complaints against the company, etc.  (You can gather a lot of information from the company’s website).

-  Contact the manufacturers on your short list and get them to provide you specific information without revealing critical information about your project.  Try to get information about their cost, timeline, security, intellectual property stipulation, total order quantity, payment schedule, etc.  Get a copy of their manufacturing agreement.  If you have to reveal informatin about your product get a Non-Disclosure Agreement signed by the manufacturer.

-  Revise your list based on the information you’ve gathered and narrow it down to 3 or 4 manufacturers. 

-  Get a quote from the final 3 or 4 manufacturers.  Develop a Request For Proposal (RFP).  The RFP is where you spell out in details your requirements.  Be sure to get a Non-Disclosure Agreement (Confidentiality Agreement) from a manufacturer before  sending them your RFP.

-  Evaluate the responses to your RFP and select the top two manufacturers that you think will best meet your requirements.

-  Conduct a site visit of the facilities of the top two(2) manufacturers.

-  Start negotiations with the final  two(2) manufacturers.  Negotiating with two(2) finalist will give you leverage to walk away from a bad deal and let you continue on your timeline to start manufacturing.

-  Select the finalist and manage your project.