Reshoring Isn’t Just a Supply Chain Problem — It’s an Engineering One

Tariffs are driving up costs. Reshoring can help protect margins — but only if engineering can move fast.

As tariff pressures mount, many manufacturers are exploring reshoring as a way to control costs and protect margins. Especially for companies operating in price-sensitive markets, absorbing the extra cost isn’t sustainable — and passing it on to customers may not be an option.

That puts engineering leaders in a critical position. Because reshoring success depends on your ability to qualify new suppliers quickly and confidently — without sacrificing cost, quality, or speed. And that’s not just a sourcing challenge. It’s a deeply technical one.

The real bottleneck? Supplier evaluation is effectively a design review — and most teams aren’t set up to run that process well.

The real challenge: supplier evaluation is a design review in disguise

When you look closely at what supplier evaluation actually involves, many engineering leaders come to the same realization: it’s functionally a design review — just with a different audience.

Before you can select a new supplier, they need to vet your design. Only they can determine whether it fits their equipment, process capabilities, cost structure, and tolerances.

That means you need to:

1. Share your design with them — PDFs over email might get you a ballpark quote, but real evaluation happens in 3D, where you can dig into technical tradeoffs.
   
2. Get the right people in the room — If your supplier is overseas, scheduling a live review is tough. Even if you succeed, only one person can drive the model while others disengage.
   
3. Capture their feedback — Maybe someone built a PowerPoint deck with annotated screenshots. Maybe someone’s just taking notes. Either way, feedback lacks context — and risks being misunderstood later.
   
4. Follow up and take action — You can only act on documented feedback. And even documented feedback often gets buried in email threads or lost in spreadsheets.
   

Now multiply this process across multiple suppliers responding to the same RFQ.

Why this matters now: the fastest teams will win

Every day you delay a supplier decision is a day your competitors move ahead. While you’re coordinating meetings, wrangling PDFs, and chasing down feedback, they’re locking in supplier capacity, securing better pricing, and accelerating their product timelines.

In a world where tariffs are unpredictable, margins are tight, and customer expectations keep rising — speed is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic advantage.

And the teams that modernize their review process — not just for products, but for suppliers — are going to win the reshoring race.

How CoLab solves the real problems, step by step

📤 1. Share your design with them — without creating risk or extra overhead

When evaluating a new supplier, the first step is sending them your design. But emailing PDFs or ZIP files is risky — especially when multiple suppliers are involved.

With CoLab Portals, you can share CAD and drawings securely through a private link, where each supplier only sees their own version of the design. They don’t need a login, and you don’t need to manage folders or permissions. It’s simple, secure, and scalable — so you can start the technical conversation without the usual admin burden.
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🌍 2. Get the right people involved — without relying solely on live meetings

Live meetings still have a place — especially for complex discussions. But they’re hard to schedule, and too often the time gets eaten up by minor issues.

With CoLab, teams can leave feedback asynchronously ahead of time, so meetings are shorter, more focused, and used for decisions that truly require discussion. And when you do meet live, everyone can interact with the model on their own screen — while feedback gets captured directly in CoLab, not lost in someone’s notes.

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💬 3. Capture their feedback — with full context and confidence you’re reviewing the right version

PowerPoint decks and screenshots go stale the moment CAD changes — which means teams can waste time reviewing outdated designs without realizing it.

CoLab eliminates that risk by letting you pin feedback directly to the model or drawing, with a saved view state and clear revision history. Comments stay tied to the right version of the file, so everyone’s looking at the same thing — and reviewing the latest design, not last week’s.

That means clearer decisions, fewer miscommunications, and no wasted effort reviewing the wrong revision.

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✅ 4. Follow up and take action — without relying on memory or manual tracking

When feedback isn’t tracked, action items fall through the cracks. Some teams try to manage this in spreadsheets. Others just rely on inboxes and memory.

CoLab creates a structured feedback database that connects every comment, decision, and action item. You can filter, sort, assign owners, and track progress — without duplicating effort. It replaces the issue-tracking spreadsheet you might be maintaining by hand — or wish you had.

What comes next: ReviewAI gives you an unfair advantage

Once you’ve fixed the core process, CoLab’s ReviewAI features help you go even further:

• Lessons Learned Engine: Surfaces insights from similar parts and past RFQs, so new suppliers benefit from your organization's knowledge — even if your experts aren’t in the room.
  
• AutoReview with Custom Checklists: Automatically flag DFM and cost risks based on your own criteria. Standardize supplier evaluations across teams and parts.
  
  

These tools help you make faster, smarter, more consistent decisions — and extend your lead against competitors that still rely on email and slide decks.

Proof it works: Mainspring Energy’s cost-reduction redesign

When Mainspring Energy used CoLab to redesign a key product enclosure, the results were dramatic:

• 50% reduction in BOM cost
  
• Design cycle cut in half — from 12 months to 6
  
• 300 updated drawings released to suppliers with zero errors
  
  

That redesign involved coordination across internal teams and multiple suppliers. And thanks to CoLab, the team moved faster and delivered cleaner work than ever before.

“We didn’t have any mistakes that made it out to the supplier. We caught everything internally and we did it faster than we would have otherwise.”
— Kevin Walters, Sr. Director of Hardware Engineering, Mainspring Energy

Reshoring won’t wait. Neither should your process.

Your next supplier decision is a design review in disguise. And whether that review is fast and thorough — or slow and risky — depends on how your team collaborates today.

CoLab makes it possible to share designs securely, evaluate them with full context, and keep track of every comment and decision — across every supplier in your RFQ.

Want to see how CoLab speeds up technical supplier evaluations? Book a Demo