Our Story
Learn our story, leadership, and mission shaping manufacturing in Mexico.
Start-Up Services for Manufacturing in Mexico
When you launch on a Tetakawi Manufacturing Campus, one project lead from our launch team runs your start-up: the building, the first hires, the permits and the first shipments, planned against your date.
The Problem
Why Launching in Mexico Takes Longer Than the Plan
Deciding on Mexico is not the hard part. Getting to first production is, because the building, the permits, the hires and the first import each answer to a different owner and a different calendar in Mexico, and none of those calendars is yours.
Two Authorities Before You Exist
A new Mexican company registers with the Ministry of Economy, then with SAT, the tax authority, before it can hire, import or invoice. Neither authority works to your date.
Advisors on Separate Fronts
A consultant finds the site, a lawyer files the permits, a recruiter fills the first roles. Each reports to you, none of them owns the date, and the gaps between them are yours to close.
What You Do Not Know Yet
Which permits your process needs, what the labor market carries, what power and water cost, how long a transformer takes. Every open question is time nobody put in the schedule.
Our Solution
One Launch Plan, One Project Lead
When you sign, one project lead from our launch team runs your launch. The building, the permits, the first hires and the first shipments go into one plan, and the teams on the Campus plan to your date. You control production, process and quality.
One Project Lead, From Signature to Delivery
You get one person. At kickoff your project lead sets who talks to whom and how often, then carries a single plan across our HR, environmental, purchasing, finance, import-export and maintenance teams. That plan runs to a formal delivery, when we hand the operation to your team and sit down with you on what we would do differently next time. You name the project owner who approves at each gate.
A Plan Built From Your Activity List
The work starts with a high-level activity list we send you. What you return becomes the project plan, with the start-up risks named beside it, each with a mitigation, a cost and an escalation path. We confirm the production date or customer-approval date you are working to, because your own customer’s sign-off can set the date as surely as any permit, and we plan every activity against it.
Your Building, Written Into the Plan
Your improvements, or a new building’s milestones, go into the same plan, and we coordinate the contractors against it. That work begins with the production-flow layout you set, because it decides where air, water and power land. Your equipment, process utilities and any electrical or cooling study your line needs are yours to fund. Getting them scheduled and installed on time is ours to coordinate.
Permits and First Hires in Parallel
We file the start-up authorizations your process calls for from the information you supply, and we recruit for your leadership roles while those filings are pending. In Mexico the permits and the people run on different calendars, so we do not let one wait for the other. We present the candidates; you interview and select; we extend the offers on your instruction. The government fees on the filings are your cost.
Your People Set Up Before the First Shipment
Before anything crosses, our import and export team walks your accountable managers through what Mexican customs will ask of them, and we set your people up in our trade and purchasing systems at the approval levels you decide. Then we stay beside them through their first live shipments and their first purchase orders, until the routine is theirs. The data behind those entries is yours to supply.
Benefits
An Operation Your Team Can Start Running
Your Launch Waits on Fewer Open Fronts
Your team arrives to a building being prepared, candidates presented and filings under way, all against one date. Every approval still comes from you.
- An approval matrix that starts short and grows with your team
- A named contact for every service from the first week
- A risk list with an owner and an escalation path for each item
- A formal delivery and a lessons-learned review when production starts
Onboarding
Your First Launch and Every Launch After
Your launch runs on one plan, and one Tetakawi project lead holds its sequence. Around that lead sit the Campus’s HR, environmental, purchasing, finance, import-export and maintenance teams, and they stay as you launch, operate and grow.
1.
Kickoff and Requirements
You name your project owner, confirm the production date you are working to, and return the completed activity list to us.
2.
Plan and Critical Path
We build the project plan and the risk register against that date, and agree both of them with you before any work starts.
3.
Parallel Workstreams
The building, hiring, trade and registration work all runs in parallel, and we meet you on a set cadence throughout.
4.
Delivery and Expansion
Your production starts and we make the formal delivery to your team. The same sequence runs again when you expand.
Testimonials
Start-Up Services in Practice
Manufacturers who launched on a Tetakawi Campus, on what the first months looked like, and what they would tell the next company.
“Tetakawi gives us all of the things that we don’t know. A lot happens when you move a business to Mexico, and they have subject matter experts on every piece of it: shipping, the labor, the tax implications, you name it. If they don’t have the answer, they’ll find it for us that same day.”
Jeremy Main, Senior Vice President, Consolidated Precision Products
“Working with Tetakawi is very repeatable and scalable because they are process oriented. They have their playbook, they run their playbook. You work together to understand who is responsible for what, and you run your play. Opening a second facility or adding more people works the same way.”
Jon Jensen, Manufacturing CEO, repeat Tetakawi client since 2001
“Aside from the physical space where we operate, Tetakawi provides the manpower we need, supports us in getting things in and out of the country, and helps make sure we comply with all regulations. Once we started with Tetakawi we were up and running and shipping finished product in three months. That is what the Campus gives us.”
Agustín Mendoza, Plant Manager, Commercial Sewing
Integrated Services
The Integrated Services Behind Every Campus
Our on-site teams help you launch your operation, keep your building running, employ and pay your workforce, move your materials across the border, buy what your plant consumes, and keep your permits, filings and registrations current.
FAQs
Start-Up Services in Mexico FAQs
The questions we get most often from manufacturers looking at Mexico.
What do you do, and what stays ours?
We run the launch. The decisions in it are yours.
One project lead from our launch team holds one plan: the building, the permits, the first hires and the first shipments, against your date. You write the requirements, approve the scope and select every hire. Your process, your corporate approvals and your own tax and legal advisors stay yours; we give no advice of that kind. Immigration and relocation support for staff you move from home, and recruiting beyond the towns around the Campus, are additional services.
What do you need from us while the launch runs?
A decision at each gate, on the cadence we agree.
The plan has gates, and each one waits on a named person on your side: the scope, the layout, the hires, the equipment dates. Your equipment, process and part data come from you, and their accuracy is yours. When your customer’s approval or your equipment date moves, we hear it the day you do, because the plan is built against it.
What happens when something slips?
It goes on the risk list, with an owner and a date.
Each start-up risk carries an owner, a mitigation, a cost and an escalation path, and we meet you on a set cadence. A delay on our side of the line is ours to work. A delay in your equipment, your customer’s approval or your data moves your date, and we replan against it rather than around it.
What happens when we expand?
The same sequence runs again, with the same lead.
A second line, a second shift or the next building comes back to the plan: you confirm the date and the scope, and the building, hiring, trade and permit work run in parallel again. The entity, the programs and the people on the Campus are already in place, so the expansion starts from an operation, not from zero.
How do we explore running our operation on a Tetakawi Campus?
Four steps, in order.
1. Get in touch. A conversation about what you are hoping to achieve in Mexico, and why now.
2. Measure ROI. We build the business case with you: the full cost of running your operation on a Campus, the risks and the trade-offs, and which Campus fits.
3. Site visit. Walk the Campus, meet the people who would run your account, talk with manufacturers already operating there, and meet the project lead who would run your launch.
4. Launch and grow. When you give the green light, the same team that helped you build the case guides the launch.
