07-31-2013, 06:03 AM
@bwaites
But don´t you think that if a company is in a situation that their customers have to wait a year and longer for ordered parts you have to change something. In that case the anticipation was wrong and has to be corrected asap. An AR bolt is not a very complex part, any machine shop with driven toolholders turning machines can manufacture that cost effectively.
I am working in the industrial goods industry near Stuttgart, Germany (Porsche & Mercedes Benz are quite in our neighborhood) and the company I am working for is buying a lot of machined products. If some of our suppliers would tell us that a standard product would have a delivery time more than 6 weeks it would be very hard (if not impossible) for the supplier to get an order the next time.
As far as I can rely on my experience, I think it would be possible to manufacture 1000 Grendel bolts and extractors in less than 6 Weeks (including hardening, surface coating and assembly) for about 15-25$ per piece.
But the real annoying thing is not their lot size policy, it is AAs website on which you can read the following statement (in case the shop website is working, right now it isn´t):
"At this time we are not able to provide estimated delivery dates due to the extremely high volume of orders we are receiving and processing every day.
All items are subject to back-order."
This is simply not acceptible because it tells you these things:
1. We do not have a clue how to manage the amounts of orders we are getting
2. We do not change our manufacturing policy/amounts of products produced per week to handle the high volume of orders we are getting.
3. We do want any business possible, regardless of delivery time, our customers will have to wait and we won´t tell them how long
But don´t you think that if a company is in a situation that their customers have to wait a year and longer for ordered parts you have to change something. In that case the anticipation was wrong and has to be corrected asap. An AR bolt is not a very complex part, any machine shop with driven toolholders turning machines can manufacture that cost effectively.
I am working in the industrial goods industry near Stuttgart, Germany (Porsche & Mercedes Benz are quite in our neighborhood) and the company I am working for is buying a lot of machined products. If some of our suppliers would tell us that a standard product would have a delivery time more than 6 weeks it would be very hard (if not impossible) for the supplier to get an order the next time.
As far as I can rely on my experience, I think it would be possible to manufacture 1000 Grendel bolts and extractors in less than 6 Weeks (including hardening, surface coating and assembly) for about 15-25$ per piece.
But the real annoying thing is not their lot size policy, it is AAs website on which you can read the following statement (in case the shop website is working, right now it isn´t):
"At this time we are not able to provide estimated delivery dates due to the extremely high volume of orders we are receiving and processing every day.
All items are subject to back-order."
This is simply not acceptible because it tells you these things:
1. We do not have a clue how to manage the amounts of orders we are getting
2. We do not change our manufacturing policy/amounts of products produced per week to handle the high volume of orders we are getting.
3. We do want any business possible, regardless of delivery time, our customers will have to wait and we won´t tell them how long