I worked for a contract manufacturing/engineering company for a while. Here is what I would recommend based on my experiences: 1. Interview employees at the C

I worked for a contract manufacturing/engineering company for a while. Here is what I would recommend based on my experiences: 1. Interview employees at the CM. Talk to the people that will be building your product. Talk to the bosses and their bosses. Talk to the people in the warehouse. Talk to the accountants. Talk to their suppliers. You need to find out how things are run. Try to see if you can shadow people in key departments at the CM. 2. Talk to their customers. Get a current and past customer list. Talk to the customers that walked away and find out why. Lots of good info here. 3. Find out when building starts. Show up unannounced and see how things are going. I recommend this throughout the relationship till you are confident that things are how you want them to be. This keeps the CM honest.