TechArchive

Original article date: September 2000

...If you are going to make a significant change to a product, then change the *$!o&* part number…

I have said a few times of late that I thought that the whole ‘business to business selling on the net’ thing was missing the point. And this week has proved me right.

Just moments ago I read an article in the IMechE comic that was intriguingly headlined “How engineers are buying on the Internet” but went on to point out that the vast majority of net purchases by businesses are for office supplies. Hardly the ‘supply train revolution’ that we keep being told is gripping our industry.

The point is, with most engineering equipment, the actual ‘placing the order and paying’ part of the purchasing transaction is a trivially small part of the whole exercise, and one for which my companies have already developed perfectly good, efficient systems that are not aided or improved at all by having to do something supplier specific on a website.

It is in the specification and selection (and post sales support) of components, not the purchasing, that we’re looking for time to be saved.

To all you suppliers out there, let me say this, which as much emphasis as ink on paper can provide: my time costs money – if you save me an hour in design and specification time, then you can add half the saving on to your component price and still be cheaper in real terms than your competitors.

But this week’s horror story bears a particularly important lesson for all suppliers out there. I’m not going to name names (though you can bet I’ve considered it), but this is what happened.

A certain company gave us some drawings in DXF form of its components. We devised a way to design mountings. Expensive parts were ordered. When the component arrived, a pattern of three through holes (that we planned to mount the part with) were nowhere to be seen. It turns out that there have been paper catalogue updates since we first obtained the DXF file (more than one in a twelve month period, apparently), but no DXF file updates. In this case, we’d have been better off never having set eyes on the DXF file. Lots of time lost, parts remade, and a significant bit of redesign of the overall machine.

I guess the key point here is that you should regard all types of product information – whether they be downloadables from a web site or a printed catalogue – as equally important, because your customers certainly will. If you give CAD files to clients, you should try and keep the major updates in sync with your ‘official catalogue’. Customers who have seen the CAD files should be entered on an update list so that they are reminded by email when the files are updated. Someone should have the job of signing off the files as correct and taking responsibility for them – rather than treating them like they are the product of some sort of basement skunkworks by the ‘techies’ who never come out into the daylight.

And finally, please, please, please if you are going to make a significant change to a product, then change the *$!o&* part number! At least then people with the old CAD files will stand a fighting chance of guessing that there has been a change, or at the very least will order an out of date part number and be told by your company that there has been a change.

One day we will get there, I’m sure. The paperless design office beckons…

September 2000