Development and manufacturing agreement: customer version

About this development and manufacturing agreement

This agreement has been drawn to cover the structure of a complicated deal in simple terms you can edit yourself. The deal is that you have a product idea and maybe some designs. This agreement covers your instruction to a manufacturer to finalise the design, pass your stringent tests, comply with national or international standards and ultimately make up in commercial quantities.

We cannot hope to think up the specification for every possible product. We leave it to you to provide your specification for design, finished product and standards to be achieved along the way.

Key features

• Favours the designer/customer not the manufacturer, so puts you in the driving seat
• Takes you logically through the practical provisions you will need
• Assumes your intellectual property is of great value and must be protected.
• Suitable for a contract with foreign supplier

Contents of this development and manufacturing agreement

The most important provisions are likely to be:

• Manufacturer’s warranties - who they are, what qualifications they have
• Scope of work - what exactly is the deal
• Design reviews, product testing and quality assurance
• Setup costs
• Payment for product development
• Delivery
• You can show their plant to potential customers or regulatory bodies
• Design price and payment
• Production price
• Use of sub-contractors
• Confidential Information, including your intellectual property
• New IP
• Rules for publicity and / or announcements