Focused on Quality, Team Smart Made Simple Rise to the Challenge.
By Steven Blyth, Director of Sales & Marketing at Smart Made Simple.
As we near the end of a very different year, the one thing that has remained constant was Smart Made Simple’s (SMS’s) ability to offer all our customers a high degree of flexibility and outstanding customer service. For many of our customers this was game-changing, enabling them to keep their own business moving forward and to support their end customers.
Over the last 12 months, we have onboarded new medical products, from a prototype concept design to production, delivering 2,500 volume units, including the test development in just under 4 weeks and moving one customer from an initial site visit to delivering their detailed proposal – receiving their order in under 48 hours and then dispatching the first 1,000 units in under nine days.
How do we achieve this flexibility? Simply, we ensure all of our staff are well communicated with and are fully aware of our customers’ needs and their expectations of SMS. We remove all of the barriers. As a privately owned business, we do not have all the levels of bureaucracy that some of the larger tier companies have, so we can make informed decisions very quickly and respond to our customers’ needs without waiting for lines of management approvals.
As a business, we truly see ourselves as an extension of our customers’ business, so we ensure we hold regular, clear and precise communication, advising our customers truthfully of what we believe is achievable, and highlighting the areas of concern so we can both address any potential barriers together.
Our customers like our positive approach and communication style, we fully understand our customers are busy, but still need and want to know what is happening with their schedules.
To address, this we review on a monthly basis a detailed data-pack that shows our performance against a set of matrices that is important to our customers. This is across all disciplines, from on-time delivery and first-time pass rates to material lead time analysis. We also focus on cost downs and efficiencies that can be achieved. By reviewing this data, it then highlights the areas that need addressing and areas in which we are excelling. We utilise a live tracker, so it is clear who has full ownership and their status. Most importantly, it shows if we are on track to meet the required deadline dates.
We also know the importance of shortening the supply chain, so we offer more than the standard contract manufacturer. We pride ourselves on taking the stress and strain off the customers’ shoulders, fully owning and delivering the projects ourselves.
Whilst being highly agile and flexible, we stringently follow defined processes. For the majority of our customers, their end-market product is focused on highly challenging environments, so it is critical we offer a very high degree of traceability of production processes, materials used and stored, and build to the highest quality.
Our service offering covers all the bases, allowing us to offer a single-sourced solution all under one roof. We handle from design and development, rapid prototyping from our dedicated development centre, new product introduction, to volume manufacture and full assembly and test, to then offering customer-specific warehousing where we ship direct to the end customers. We do not stop there, we also operate a full third-party logistics offering out of warranty repairs, upgrades and refurbishment, to ensure customers can offer their end market a sustainable lifecycle and a circular economy.
But, the key to this is building a very strong and trusted relationship with our customers at all levels across the business. As an experienced board of Directors, we want to ensure we fully understand the future needs and demand our customers are likely to face, so we can be seen as their true partner and extension of their own business. I see this as one of the main ingredients to developing a long and healthy professional relationship.
We hold each other fully accountable, and we all have the same passion to being successful and growing our business. This does not come with luck – this comes from empowering our workforce to being the best they can be and wanting every employee to make a positive difference. And over the last 12 months, we have seen this in its bucket loads – every member of our team has risen to challenges and tough deadlines set by our customers. They have all walked away feeling immensely proud and glad to be part of such an amazing team and company. Afterall, it’s Smart Made Simple.
About Smart Made Simple – SMS
The U.K.’s leading Manufacturing Service Provider.
From concept to creation, to commercialisation, to customer, for all technology companies. Whether you are a start-up, or an established household brand name, if you have a design, engineering, manufacturing or supply chain problem, thanks to the diversity of our experience and scalable service, SMS has the solution.
Since 1920, SMS has manufactured electronics products from the same home in Nottingham, U.K. For over 100 years, we have been the company behind the ideas, offering agile and adaptive supply chain solutions, that bring products to market faster, smarter and simpler.
Leader in the specialist low volume, highly complex manufacturing services market space, SMS has earned critical industry facility certifications, that brings full viability and credibility to the aerospace & defence, communications, industrial and medical markets. SMS brings the right scale, capabilities and competitive solutions to customers needing high-reliability attention, product realisation and supply chain optimisation.
For further information, visit www.smartmadesimple.com.
About our dedicated Development Centre: https://smselectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/About-our-Development-Centre_FINAL.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/smartmadesimple
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sms-electronics/?trk=company_logo
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIv_AVfzPbDqEVSpKMxu-jg
If you have any questions about this article or any services/solutions that Smart Made Simple (SMS) offer, please contact Director of Sales & Marketing, Steven Blyth on 07972308037.