The Taz! said:
One practice that has been tried and proven is to send out a couple of people to the machine supplier/manufacturer and do some prove-out (validation) testing. . . with the actual tooling, gaging, material and operators.
This performs 4 functions. . . 1) will it make what we need? 2) if not, are we measuring it right? 3) can our people operate it? and 4) you have the expert machine designers (Or sales person - Yuk Yuk) there to answer the questions before you get the boat anchor in-house.
This performs 4 functions. . . 1) will it make what we need? 2) if not, are we measuring it right? 3) can our people operate it? and 4) you have the expert machine designers (Or sales person - Yuk Yuk) there to answer the questions before you get the boat anchor in-house.
Back in the 90's (at a contract manufacturer of machined parts), we contracted for 3 high tech machine tools (two turning centers and one vertical mill) for a total of $1,000,000.
Our negotiation with the manufacturer included
- drawings and prototypes of the parts we wanted to make on these tools
- a good faith estimate by the manufacturer on REAL production rate
We went back and negotiated a thirty day trial on our floor, with the manufacturer's tech gurus to nursemaid us. The deal was we would hit the projected production rate within 30 days or manufacturer had two choices:
- take all the machines back at his expense,
OR - negotiate a lower price with us in line with the REAL production rate.
The manufacturer THANKED us for giving them the opportunity to learn in a real world environment. They were certain the lessons learned would help them make better machines. Our guys were happy as they could be. They had established a real rapport with various gurus from the manufacturer who were always on tap for future advice. Our guys learned stuff about those machines they never would have learned without the manufacturer gurus (one of whom was a major design engineer of the machine.)