Conservative. Idaho. Software engineer. Historian. Trying to prevent Idiocracy from becoming a documentary.
Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton @ claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt.
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." -- Rom. 8:28
IIRC, your problem was 'too much success' and trouble keeping up with orders.
If that's the reason, perhaps you should investigate better, more powerful equipment. Sherline makes wonderful stuff, but it's hardly the type of machines used for high production environments. Obviously, you would need to pencil out the economics, but...
You might even consider farming out some operations. I have a friend who has a small machine shop with modern CNC equipment, whose work is largely small production runs of precision parts. He's one of many across the country, and it's pretty easy to get in contact with them. I'd think you'd have to think in terms of 50 or so parts per order.
Now that I think of it, the latter would probably be the way to go, leaving you with assembling and shipping. Even those functions could be done by others.
You complained about not making a profit. Raise the selling price by as much as you think your time and equipment use and utilities is worth. Don't forget to figure the income tax hit into it.
Jim: Cost of Goods Sold was too high relative to sale price. Labor was a component, but not the major cost. More efficient manufacture would have been a small gain in profit. Larger equipment would have meant large capital outlay. Perhaps ordering thousands of casters at a time would have helped. (These were the single most expensive component, once we started mass production.)
IIRC, your problem was 'too much success' and trouble keeping up with orders.
ReplyDeleteIf that's the reason, perhaps you should investigate better, more powerful equipment. Sherline makes wonderful stuff, but it's hardly the type of machines used for high production environments. Obviously, you would need to pencil out the economics, but...
You might even consider farming out some operations. I have a friend who has a small machine shop with modern CNC equipment, whose work is largely small production runs of precision parts. He's one of many across the country, and it's pretty easy to get in contact with them. I'd think you'd have to think in terms of 50 or so parts per order.
Now that I think of it, the latter would probably be the way to go, leaving you with assembling and shipping. Even those functions could be done by others.
You complained about not making a profit. Raise the selling price by as much as you think your time and equipment use and utilities is worth. Don't forget to figure the income tax hit into it.
ReplyDeleteThen, see if orders continue to arrive.
Already did that. Orders fell to the "Why am I doing this?" level.
ReplyDeleteJim: Cost of Goods Sold was too high relative to sale price. Labor was a component, but not the major cost. More efficient manufacture would have been a small gain in profit. Larger equipment would have meant large capital outlay. Perhaps ordering thousands of casters at a time would have helped. (These were the single most expensive component, once we started mass production.)
ReplyDelete