On 02/23/2011 08:15 AM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:05:29 -0500, wrote:
Hey guys, maybe you can help me out a bit here..
Here's the situation. We do some work for the food industry, so almost
everything we weld for them we need to grind smooth and polish the welds
and surfaces. Now this can be on an OD, or ID, or flat area.. Sometimes
its as big as 5" ID, or as small as 2" ID.. At the moment, and this is a
rough estimate, but we'll spend about an hour welding something, and 3
hours polishing. We grind with stones and flap wheels or sandpaper discs
on a pneumatic right angle or straight grinder, then polish with finer
flaps and or scotch bright wheels.
I really have to explore different avenues because this polishing time
is killing us. So, I come to you to ask, how the hell can I make these
jobs profitable?
It sounds as if you're underbidding and underbilling. Start billing
for time spent. That's why food tables are so damned expensive.
Have you tried belt sanders, either 1" angle-grinder addons or larger?
Or work hard to bring your grinding & polishing costs down to the bid
prices that are winning you business.
Losing money on every sale and trying to make it up in volume is a
bitch, isn't it?
If you have someone smart and motivated on staff (you? that guy who's
always coming up with the irritating suggestions?) you could assign them
to spend a few hours a day investigating the whole grinding/polishing
process to try to find out what's cheapest. Pay attention to supplies
cost, too -- both so you don't save pennies on time while losing dollars
on supplies, and so you don't save pennies on supplies while losing
dollars on time.
I'd even consider going over your welding technique -- if you can spend
an extra 20% time on the welding and save 20% time on the polishing,
that's a 16% overall time savings, given your 3:1 polishing to welding
ratio.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
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