Can You Make Five by Friday?

It’s a question we get asked surprisingly often.

“Can you make five by Friday?”

Sometimes it’s ten. Sometimes it’s twenty. Occasionally it’s just one.

The numbers change, but the situation is usually the same: someone has a problem, they need a piece of technology to solve it, and they need it quickly.

For many manufacturers, that’s a difficult request.

For us, it’s exactly the kind of challenge EMP Designs was built to handle.

When You Don't Need 10,000

Modern manufacturing is very good at producing thousands of identical products.

But what happens when you only need five?

Perhaps you're building a film set and need five electronic props.

Maybe you're developing a new product and need ten working prototypes for trials.

You might have an exhibition opening next week, a theatre production approaching technical rehearsals, or a machine that's waiting for a custom interface.

You don't need a production run of 10,000 units.

You need five. And you need them by Friday.

That's a very different manufacturing problem.

Design and Manufacturing Under One Roof

One of the reasons we can respond quickly is that we don't separate product development from manufacturing.

At EMP Designs, electronic design, PCB layout, firmware development, PCB assembly, mechanical work, assembly and testing can all happen within the same building.

A design engineer can make a change to a PCB and speak directly to the person who is going to manufacture it.

A prototype can be assembled, programmed and tested without being sent between several different suppliers.

If we discover something that could be improved, we can modify it and try again.

That ability to move quickly between design, manufacture and testing makes an enormous difference when time matters.

From an Idea to Something You Can Hold

Sometimes customers arrive with a finished design.

More often, they arrive with a problem.

They might have a sketch, an existing product that isn't quite suitable, a prototype that needs developing, or simply an idea of what they need something to do.

That's where our combination of engineering and manufacturing becomes particularly useful.

We can help turn the requirement into a practical solution and then manufacture it.

That might involve designing a PCB, writing firmware, creating an enclosure, integrating wireless communications, developing a lighting control system or bringing several technologies together.

And because the people designing it understand how we're going to manufacture it, we're thinking about how to build it from the beginning.

Small Quantities Are Important to Us

Small production runs can be awkward for traditional manufacturers.

Setting up machines, ordering components and organising production can make small quantities unattractive.

But many of the industries we work with don't operate in thousands.

Film and television productions might need six units.

A theatre production might need twelve.

A visitor attraction may need twenty controllers.

An engineering company developing a new product might need five prototypes before committing to a larger production run.

These aren't inconvenient orders to us.

They're an important part of what we do.

Speed Without Losing Control

Working quickly doesn't mean skipping the engineering.

Products still need to be assembled properly, programmed, inspected and tested before they leave us.

Having the process under one roof means we can remove many of the delays that normally occur between those stages rather than removing the stages themselves.

That's an important distinction.

The objective isn't simply to manufacture quickly.

It's to engineer quickly.

And Sometimes, Yes, We Can Make Five by Friday

We can't promise that every idea that arrives on Monday can leave as five finished products on Friday.

Component availability, complexity and testing requirements all have an impact.

But you'd be surprised how often a seemingly impossible deadline becomes achievable when the designers, programmers and manufacturing team are all working together in the same building.

So if you find yourself asking:

“I know this is a bit last minute, but can you make five by Friday?”

Ask us.

It's exactly the sort of question we like.