A Brief Guide to Expanding Your Manufacturing Business
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As a business owner, you naturally want to see your company succeed. After all the hard work and dedication you have put in, realising that your business is thriving is one of the most incredible feelings.
While this can be an exciting time for you and your employees, it can also pose new challenges that you need to take into consideration. As your business starts attracting more customers, the demand for your products and services rises with this demand. You might find that your small company can no longer keep up with this, and expanding your company is necessary.
This can be both thrilling and challenging for any type of business, but when you are a manufacturing company, some of these logistics can become a little more complicated. If you are looking at expanding your manufacturing company so that you can cater to more customers, here are some tips to keep in mind that could be helpful for this next phase of your business.
1. Consider Your Financial Position
Growing your company will cost money, and although your profits might be looking great now, you do need to think carefully about how you are going to budget for your expansion. Additional costs such as building or leasing a larger site for the factory, more employees, distribution costs, and even improving your marketing campaigns are all examples of what needs to be included. Although this can be a worthwhile investment, you need to be confident that you will be able to see a return on this sooner rather than later to keep the company moving forward rather than slipping back.
It could be smart to hire a financial consultant offering finance advice for your business to help you go through these considerations before you start putting your plans into action. This advisor could help to highlight some key areas where you could save money or where you can make smarter investments to help boost your expanding business. You may even discover that there are certain assets you no longer need that could be sold to help fund part of your company’s expansion plans. In any case, having some expert advice is always useful in these circumstances.
2. Searching for a New Site
If you have chosen to move your company to a brand-new site, or you are just seeking a secondary site for your factory, you will need to make sure that the location is suitable. When you are looking at sites, consider how easy it will be for employees to get there and how your business might impact the surrounding environment. The lease for the site is also important to take into consideration, as well as what kind of services will be included in this.
If you are choosing to build a factory on some land as part of your expansion rather than leasing a site, this might be a little more complicated. You will need to make sure you have planning permission from the local council to construct a factory on this land. This will certainly include environmental considerations, too, such as how your business will responsibly get rid of waste and any other possible disruption your company could cause to the local wildlife and residents nearby.
3. Upgrading Your IT and Infrastructure Systems
Having a bigger space to operate out of will be important, but if you want to run your factory and business right, you will also need to consider upgrading your IT networks and other infrastructure systems. As a manufacturing company, you will rely a lot on technology at various stages of the manufacturing process, as well as other important tasks like keeping records updated and secure, communicating with customers, and so forth.
This is why it is important to think carefully about how you can do this and look for services that can assist you with this kind of expansion. An example of a good company that specialises in this kind of support, particularly for manufacturers, is Cedar Bay.
4. Recruiting New Staff
You will need to find more staff to help you keep up with the demands of your customers, especially if you are opening a brand-new factory as a secondary site for your business. It’s not just about talented technicians working on the factory floors, however. You will also need to find administration staff, HR teams, maintenance workers, and more. You can use a recruitment agency to help you find the best candidates for your vacancies to help you save time and find the right people to join your company.
Of course, there is a lot more work than this that goes into a company expansion, but if you are looking to move your manufacturing business to the next phase, consider the points above as all good places to start.
