suggesting design changes to customers, your input?

I've often found heavy resistance offering design/feature changes to customers that would improve a product or simply improve manufacturability.
Ill use an example of a part to highlight my current situation:

a customer ask me if I can make a big ugly sprocket for them. Sample pc. is a simple shaft with keyway, with 3 torch cut plate sprockets welded together and onto the shaft (seriously nasty) the sprocket is run dry against another sprocket in a crude device. I have offered a cnc machined sprocket out of pre hard 4140. customer likes it. I've made a few now. thinking about it I propose an improvement offering not welding it to the shaft, but using a interference fit to lock it to the shaft. this makes the shaft or sprocket exchangeable when worn, while not weakening the shaft with weld. I have done this with most multi thousand HP electric drives, including with recip loads. right now he hates the idea. I feel he simply does not understand the concept (oilfield, always a bigger hammer, weld everything is the attitude in our region)
any tips on getting my message across?

I run into this with even simple things, AKA, would you consider a larger pocket corner radi in this deep pocket. ( I know its simply clearance) I feel like ive lost a job or 2 over this kind of thing, simply trying to help

I do it all the time with long term customers who rely on my knowledge and experience. New customers, you have to be selective with suggestions. Some engineers welcome manufactureablity critique, others are offended (or emabarrased ?) that they don't understand how things are really made. If you play up the cost savings, sometimes that does the trick.

There have been a few times at work that i have been called in to look at some prints sent by one specific customer who is looking for quotes. We are sort of their last resort when stuff gets no-quoted. More often than not we do the parts for them.....and they pay for it.....as drawn. alot of times when we no-quote something we will get a call from an engineer asking why. On quite a few occasions after explaining the "manufacturability" of a certain feature they are willing to change it.
I guess what goes through my head sometimes is ......if they put it back out for quotes after the changes they would probably have a pile of bids to choose from. We rarely see repeat work on those jobs. I suspect subsequent runs do get resubmitted for quotes.
My point is.....if we offered every change we would prefer.....we would basically end up being their unpaid production engineering department but never get any contracts......just a thought.

Also makes a difference between job shop and in house products. I love making stuff for us, not someone else! I usually get too make allot of inputs that get accepted.. like I need to finish this feature with 2 tools to be efficient, will a mismatch be a problem? No, as long as it is less than .xxx

The best way for it to always go over well is to start with "I have a few ideas that can save you some money." The deal is you make the changes that split the difference, where the price can go down while at the same time increasing your margins.

Depends. Some customers, its just too damn big of a hassle.
The people getting the quotes, the people writing the POs,
several layers of decision making power in QC, owners. Sometimes
its just not worth wasting your time.


Though occasionally,
you just say screw it and do it yourself. Example: Making parts for a welded assembly,
there is a boss that gets welded to a plate. Welders can't measure, so make a little
pocket in the plate, .030 to .050 deep and then make the boss a little longer. Then
TELL QC what you did and why.

There is one part that I do every 5 years or so. Just did a few recently. 2 different
clevis type things. A threaded rod gets brazed into the clevis, both parts are the same
material, and they go to the same heat treat (which gets killed when brazing). I just
make the whole damn thing out of one piece. Nobody has bitched about that yet. And if
they did, I would just take them back and get a silver paint pen and color where the
joint should be.

When your customer has to supply parts TO PRINT PERIOD, there is sometimes not a lot you
can do. If its a welded assembly, there are a ton of ways things can be changed on the
machined parts to make the welding side of it a lot easier (example above). Castings can
be altered, nothing pisses me off more than when they try casting in small holes, and
expect you to clean them up. Skip the holes, the casting will be cheaper. Material SIZE
and sometimes shape can be changed from what is called out on the print to make machining
easier and/or make the material cheaper.

If its your customers own products, and you have a good relationship with them. Game on.
That's when it can be fun, that's when it IS fun. I know I've mentioned it before, but the
guys right down the street makes their own stuff, all their own designs. I have no problem
playing engineer for them, and on some complicated stuff that actually takes design and time,
I do charge, and they know that. At least once a week we brainstorm on how to do something
better. Its a lot of fun, and most of the time I get to see the final product, and occasionally
I even get to see it in action out in the field (or processing plant).

Takes a special customer though. If I was a more religious person, I would say I'm blessed
to have such a good customer, but I think I'm just lucky. I've been pinched a few times for
cash, and they'll just write me a check, or even just open their wallet and hand me a pile
of cash.

My cleaning guy/handy man had a stroke a few months back, and they were going to need a
wheel chair ramp after he got out of rehab. And I already volunteered "if you guys need anything".
And they did. Railings. Thankfully handy man's brother was a welder and also knew my customer,
and he did a lot of the welding.

So I had my customer order me the material for the railings, since he orders tons of material,
and can get it far cheaper than me. He wouldn't let me pay for it. Handy Man's brother went
down and tried to pay for it. NOPE. Then they plasma cut some stuff out of sheet for me/us, and
when all was said and done, they even powder coated the railings.

Best customer ever. And he listens to my ideas.

Here's a few shots of the wheelchair ramp and railings. I think they came out pretty spiffy.





That post was way longer than I intended. Must be work to do.

Waste of time and no reword for helping, just do the job their way and shut up, and you will not be sued, just write the bill and drink a beer...Phil

Phil in Montana said:

Waste of time and no reword for helping, just do the job their way and shut up, and you will not be sued, just write the bill and drink a beer...Phil

Click to expand...

I 100% agree with the "just drink beer". Its a lot more dignified than crying.

But.. In the right situations you have to do it. Even in the wrong situations, you have to try,
but nobody says you have to try for very long or very hard. I 100% understand.. Sometimes it comes
down to "Fuck it. I don't care any more, as long as my check clears".

That's way more than "spiffy".

I think that the biggest hurdle is when you are Tier 2 or lower from the customer that drew the print.

Almost never will your customer ask for changes, and I find it even hard to get any clarifications in this situation.

So the answer is in this case (and after 30+ years I am still trying to learn to just doo it) is to just quote it both ways.
It's usually just as - if not quicker - just to run the numbers both ways than to even ask the question.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Bobw said:

I 100% agree with the "just drink beer". Its a lot more dignified than crying.

But.. In the right situations you have to do it. Even in the wrong situations, you have to try,
but nobody says you have to try for very long or very hard. I 100% understand.. Sometimes it comes
down to "Fuck it. I don't care any more, as long as my check clears".

Click to expand...

Also what happens if you quote a job with tight tolerances that drive up the price you believe are unnecessary and the customer unhappy with the price starts shopping? The next guy gets the tolerance opened up and cuts your price by 10% and gets the job, while opening the tolerances cuts the time needed to do the job in half.

Dualkit said:

Also what happens if you quote a job with tight tolerances that drive up the price you believe are unnecessary and the customer unhappy with the price starts shopping? The next guy gets the tolerance opened up and cuts your price by 10% and gets the job, while opening the tolerances cuts the time needed to do the job in half.

Click to expand...

I think "quote it both ways" applies here too.

Thank you All for your input.
I was unable to convince the customer to make the change, so is life I suppose, But it is always good to open conversations with customers.
I actually made up a pamphlet about "getting cheaper quotes" that explained a bunch of topics. material selection, quantities, setup/design considerations... stuff like that. basically it was an attempt to get their gears turning and hopefully get them to approach me to ask what may be changes for manufacturability. so far its not been to helpful but it puts a nice looking reference document in my customers hands with my name plastered all over it.

Here's a photo of my sweet ass ugly gears milled out on my haas tm-1
function of the gear is to rotate an interchangeable spool. metal on metal grinding, and they never lubricate it! previously they where made of 3 plates welded together and "smoothed" with a course angle grinder. Oh the junk we see

that is a shame they could not allow the change, but it may be something critical, or something that has cause great issues for them in the past. Easier to stick with what is working lots of times !

We offer help in the form a material or design change when we feel it will substantially help the manufacturing process, which in turn drives down pricing. Some customers just do not want anything but a quote on their item as is, and you need to be able to read between the lines with those customers, and give them what they want. We have no quoted on more than one occasion; due to features we just knew would bite us in the backside if we did it to print. We have also gotten jobs and were told no one else would make it to print, but we were able to. We know we arnt going to win them all, but we do our best to make sure we communicate everything to our customer

Had a customers engineer complain to my boss about me asking him about how he wanted a feature machined and my boss chewed my ass out. Same afternoon another customer came in for a tour at my invite. The tour came across my boss and I stood there smiling as they thanked him for the great suggestions I gave them on making their drawings better to reduce the machining cost. Gotta love Karma!

OT why don't you shrink fit the shafts in your cogs and forget the welding??...Phil

Always advise a change if you see trouble.

If they do not acknowledge. Do not go forward.

Phil in Montana said:

Waste of time and no reword for helping, just do the job their way and shut up, and you will not be sued, just write the bill and drink a beer...Phil

Click to expand...

Phil,
Regardless if it was someone's design, if you produce this piece of shit, it has your name all over it.

As a customer I'm receptive to potential design changes. Especially if its going to save us money or reduce delivery times. The only thing is sometimes things have to be a certain way due to how the part would integrate with other processes in our shop. As a supplier we make recommendations or suggestions to our customer all of the time on what they are asking us to supply them.

Depends on the customer. Some stuff I'm happy to help when asked for ideas, and I'll also ask if I see a potential problem if 2 things may not fit.
But other times I just no quote rather than waste my time on a job I probably won't get anyway if there's drawing issues or requires chasing unicorn materials.