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IndustryArena Forum > Manufacturing Processes > Other Manufacturing Processes > Can anyone share their experience manufacturing a physical product?
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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2019
    Posts
    1

    Can anyone share their experience manufacturing a physical product?

    Hello everyone,,
    For most of our parts we became the supplier as we purchased sveral cnc machines and learned how to use them. I had some background in this as I worked in a amchine while studying industrial design at Arizona State. We don't make every single component, though, so I sourec parts via google and the telephone. One of our products needed a rubebr grip. I found one I liked in a bike shop and searched for the name of the manufacturer on the packaging. Called them up, and eventually reached a sales rep and negotaited an order.

    I calulated how much it costs me to run the shop per minute (that includes fixed costs as well as labor, consumables, power, insurances, etc. and is based on a 40-hour work week. If we ever run multpile shifts, that cost will come down a bit as we'd be getting more from the fixed part of our costs.) When we design a new product, I time how long it takes to go from raw material to finished part and multiply that by the minute cost. I add in materials costs and use that as my manufacturing cost. this then gets multiplied for fun and profit. I don't use anything fancy to keep track of this. I figure it out once then forget about it. From there, I just watch the accounting software, which is very basic, to make sure that our real costs aren't creeping up and that our pe-minute costs remain accurate. We're a company of 5 so time is not somethign we have lots of, so I like to come up with Rules of Thumb (based on real data) and use those, whith a sanity check once a month.

    We don't import materials or parts, but we do sell a lot to customers overseas. These are direct sales so we just mail stuff.(we've actually sent an order to Timbuktu...irrelevant but fun to mention.)

    Almost every day. Manufacturing stuff yourself or letting someone else do it and managing the resulting supply chain is like captaining an old russian submarine. Stuff is always breaking and there's no reliable manual to tell you how to fix it. The biggest issue for us is having our vendors run out of stock on critical parts. This can not hurts production, but customer relations as well because the vedors don't always know or won't say when they'll have your critical part back in stock, which means you can only give vague answers to your customers. Not good. We get around this by either moving more of those parts to internal production (often requiring costly but one-time expenditures) or finding multiple vendors or making huge purchases (our least favorite option.) And though it sounds funny, we use mcmaster carr a lot for stuff. They're not the cheapest, but they have a ****ton of components and you can almost always get them next day. Great for prototyping and to get you out of a pinch. I always design around a mcmaster part then find a cheaper source for production. This gives me warma nd fuzzies knowing I can always get the parts I need and keep customers happy (at the expense of some profit.)

    Selling more product and keeping all the stuff the shop needs to run (raw material to hand cleaner) ordered. It seems like I spend way too much time ordering stuff. I keep meaning to automate this .
    Last edited by Macgomes; 04-13-2019 at 08:12 PM.

  2. #2

    Re: Can anyone share their experience manufacturing a physical product?

    Quote Originally Posted by brianatkins View Post
    The best business model that everyone knows is to be a manufacturer of a product or service. After all, being a manufacturer, you get maximum profit with minimal competitors..
    Best business model , max profit , min competitors ?

    can you expand on these 3 points in regards to metal manufacturing

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