The Trifecta
Excellent part quality, fast development, and inexpensive to produce. That’s like the “holy trinity” of manufacturing. The trifecta, if you will. The only problem is that doesn’t exist in the real world. Sorry to burst your bubble…
Let’s see if we can break this down a little bit. When a company or an entrepreneur wants to develop a new product and bring it to market they have to make some decisions about objectives. Whether its an invention, an innovation, or after-market, the same still applies. Will they be focused on overall part quality? Maybe this is a specialized product with high margins and equally high barriers to entry for your target market share. Perhaps this is a high volume consumable where your margins are less than stellar so the production cost is your limiting factor. Will your company stand out from the crowd because you are the first to market?
Quality
Using the best materials, engineered parts to tight tolerances, unrelenting QA inspections to ensure parts fit the exacting standards that we hold near and dear when assigning value.
Fast Development
Getting a product on the shelves before any potential competitors, capturing market share by being the first, or on the rare occasion creating a new market to capture.
Cost to Produce
The resources required for R&D efforts, regulatory testing, prototyping, molds, fixturing, packaging, and all this on top of the actual manufacturing costs.
These are all important considerations and have vastly different answers based on many factors. They could anything from available capital resources to the industry in question, just to name a few. So why can’t some enterprising young inventor solve the equation and find the perfect solution to make something fast, at an affordable cost to produce, and never compromise quality?
Here's the rub
- If you want quality parts and a quick time to market, it is going to cost you. Throwing manpower and resources at problems is a great way to solve manufacturing issues but those all cost money.
- You can get quality parts designed and produced at lower physical prices if you don’t mind doing a lot of the work yourself. This also literally makes you the bottleneck for all manufacturing decisions and will not be as efficient as if you had a team of engineers working together.
- Finally, you could always rush a product to market, saving time and money wherever possible but I can promise you one thing. Concessions will be made in terms of quality. Depending on the product, that may be okay. It might not require tight tolerances to be effective or it might just be a lower price point alternative where higher part-part variation is acceptable.
The point being, when developing new products or processes, you as the leader/entrepreneur or the engineer in charge of the project need to be cognizant of the goals and objectives to properly weigh each and every decision in the correct frame of mind. Good, fast, and cheap all rolled into one solution would be amazing but unfortunately, it just isn’t in the cards. The best you can hope for is to strike a balance that makes the best business sense. Get savvy my friends! (See what I did there?)
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Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent that of anyone mentioned in the articles or of my current employer. I am/We are maintaining this blog in an effort to increase awareness and open the door for dialogue in any form about the history of manufacturing, current trends in the industry, and opportunities for the future. Any direct links on this page may or may not be part of an affiliate marketing program and this site may generate revenue from qualifying purchases. Thank you for reading.
Steve Ritter
Mechanical Design Engineer and Project Manager with close to 15 years in a manufacturing setting. I have experience with many CAD software packages over the years (Autodesk (all), Solidworks, Pro/Engineer, UniGraphics), CNC and manual machine operation, CNC programming, and Electro-mechanical prototyping and system design.
