Not too long ago I was producing a part here in the US that was quite precise yet possible to be manufactured by someone else if they were a talented experienced machinist who could read an engineering drawing. Yes, there was a very slight machining “trick” to be executed but any experienced person could easily navigate the waters to machine the part. The part was to be used in a rotary viscous damper for a slow close operation. So to see what an offshore company could produce in volume I RFQ’d a few companies to bid on the job. I received only “no quotes” from every company. The reason for the refusal was that the tolerance was to tight on only one specific dimension. Let’s go back to the beginning of this post, it reads I was producing a part here into US . Also, I neglected to mention that I had produced thousands of this part without any rejects. I guess one could say that it takes an intelligent company to realize their limitations, but one could definitely say that you will never innovate or be a leader if you never take risks or be afraid to fail. By “no quoting” my part only shows that the offshore sources are not rising to American challenges and they could succeed even further by taking some risks
Not so surprising offshore outsourcing problem
By Mechanical Motion Tech LLC|2019-11-08T14:59:09+00:00August 10th, 2012|damping, friction hinges, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, rotary viscous damping, Uncategorized|
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