On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 22:20:31 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:


"George Max" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:13:46 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:



I find it very easy to believe that a company may be willing to sell
themselves and build a few tens of thousands of units for Sears with
Sears's price point requirement. Bosch or Porter Cable would know
what to do to meet the cost requirement.

It would cost more to retool to make 10,000 units than would be saved by
the
retooling.

It's not a matter of "knowing what to do", it's a matter of stopping the
line, tearing out tooling and machinery, installing new tooling and
machinery to produce the new design, restarting the line, making the run,
and then repeating the whole process again to go back to regular
production.

Making design changes with hand-made one-offs is easy, making design
changes
in something that is mass-produced is not a trivial undertaking and has
very
significant costs. Further, most of the cost of making just about
anything
is labor--substituting pot metal for aluminum won't reduce the labor.


You're far far of the mark.

I work in engineering in exactly the kind of situation you're
expounding on. My company makes many thousands of any particular
model.

It is in fact not especially difficult to make changes within any
particular product to cheapen it.

30 years of my life are invested in product design and development.
Don't hand me that line of crap. It is in fact extremely easy to make
changes and substitutions that result in real cost savings for the
manufacturer without inordinate expense to do so.

If your company makes "thousands" you're probably using NC machines. That's
semicustom manufacture. Get to real high volume and you'll find that
purpose-made tooling is used, the changing of which isn't cheap.


We do nothing of the kind. Our stuff is put together pretty much the
same as any power tool.

Trust me, there are plenty of things to do to save money. This is
what they pay me for - be imaginitive.