Turnkey Done Better

Sonic Manufacturing’s turnkey services are unique in the industry. We understand that predicting the future is no easy task, and therefore we refuse to “blame the forecast” when your actual demand arrives differently than the forecast. Instead, Sonic has done everything in its power to be quick, nimble and accurate in executing on “what you need” inside of lead time. In fact, over half of our customer demand is for delivery in under half of lead time!

At Sonic, we know that your one-month sales horizon is more accurate than your six-month sales horizon. Our ability to quickly adapt to changes in short-term demand means we are spending more of our time on keeping your customers happy, and less of our time and your money on the consequences of producing what you thought might make them happy. While a longer term horizon is great for establishing the pipeline to support you and your customers; it is our ability to adapt to changes rapidly that keeps you profitable and your customers coming back. Reducing lead time is the ultimate improvement to forecast accuracy— no six-figure black-box forecasting tools required.

Launching a New Product

We can be up & running with you or your new product in as little as a day. To begin this process, we review your turnkey documentation for accuracy and upload it into our systems; leaving no room for data entry errors. Once the ERP is set, 70% of the purchase orders will be placed automatically by our ecommerce systems— no human intervention. Don’t have time to wait on the next MRP run? No problem, we will hand-hold & special run your quick-turn to bring it in sooner.

At Sonic, there is no distinction between “production” and “quick turn”. Everything is run through the quick turn process. Speed saves us time, handling, aging, reporting, cash cycle etc. In short, “supply chain agility” is the best business model for you and for Sonic. Our business metrics are aligned.

And the entire factory is this agile: all 10 Fuji lines and 100,000s/f of it. We don’t point to a seldom used corner of the factory and call it “our proto line”. Every line can handle your NPI and prototypes anywhere in the factory. It’s our job to have the resources when you need to move.

How Do We Do It?

How can we move so quickly? Our data is impeccably accurate. We continuously adapt custom code and expert systems to stay ahead of our evolving processes; policing the data, filling in the gaps and correcting mistakes. In short, we can auto-spend our money and auto-commit your materials without having to wait on multi-tasked people to get around to it— and we rarely make a mistake. While other companies use their ecommerce to share bad data faster than ever before; Sonic has eliminated the root cause of bad data.

Have mistakes or slow responsiveness been the cause of excess and obsolete disputes with your CMs in the past? Or does it appear that they have taken the high-quantity PPV while giving you the high-quantity E&O? Sonic has the disciplines and financial controls in place to prevent E&O before it happens and to obtain authorization where risk is unavoidable. Recent experience has shown that when our customers have phased out similar assemblies across multiple CEMs, they have typically found our end-of-program liabilities to be 10%-20% of the competition. We run it tight & lean.

The Results

Sonic is currently building and exporting subassemblies as a supplier to Asian factories; and has “backshored” over 200 assemblies from Asia to the United States. With a declining dollar, rising Asian costs and increased fuel, freight & container fees; Sonic is surprisingly cost-effective. Additionally, if your offshore factory requires 12 weeks on reschedules and 4 weeks on the water; we can probably make you a hero to your own sales, marketing, finance and end customers.

The Conclusion

The world is changing; and so is the paradigm that offshore manufacturing automatically means a more cost-effective delivered product. Accepting offshore PPVs that increase total (interdepartmental) business costs is not a sustainable business model; and holding your end customers hostage to offshore lead times is hardly conducive to growth. Alternatively, compensating for long lead times with high inventories that are invariably misaligned to demand has its own inherent problems.

Before locking in a rising offshore cost structure that is inherently less responsive to order fulfillment; look to optimize your total business, not any individual metric isolated from the rest of the business. Consider the new business model— “Value Chain*”. Align with a partner that is aligned with your goals.

*Gartner : “The Value Chain Transformation” drives joint value and outcome-focused performance results (i.e. profitable perfect orders) above traditional process, cost and functional metrics. www.gartner.com