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2011-11-01 01:46:12 (8317 views) Many of you follow this blog to keep up with the latest and greatest of Male Management science. Some follow because they enjoy watching this product development reality show in all its gory detail. The truth is, manufacturing is a challenge, especially in a small market, when you cannot buy a vendor or manufacturer's loyalty and professionalism with large orders.
Due to the large number of naysayers and detractors who became vociferous during the last phases of development of our first product, the DreamLover 2000, we haven't exactly indulged in "manufacturing rants" - the ChronoVault was announced without much being said about the difficulties encountered in its prototyping and production. At least the many delays aggravated no one but us!
However we may have overdone it a little and we realize the process was a lot more fun for us when we could report daily on our manufacturing adventures. So here's a long overdue mini-report on the difficulties we're facing and how much work is behind a working, nicely designed and packaged product being sold on our website.
Just this week we had the following news:
- 100 arousal inducers were wasted because a new person was put on the job without supervision. The process of creating these is multi-step and very error prone, involving precision soldering, special bonding material that withstand high temperatures and pressures, and a delicate overmolding process. These motors are no longer in production so losing 100 pieces (a 50% scrap rate!) was a shock, especially since our most reliable manufacturer is taking care of these and especially since this wasn't even a molding problem, but just a silly soldering problem. One of the things that's hard when you work in a small market is that you can't be too pushy or complain too much, or vendors will drop your business. So a delicate balance needs to be found between making it very clear that this kind of lack of supervision is not acceptable, and maintaining a friendly relationship. That is until it becomes clear the vendor will be a net liability - then you can just vent some cumulative frustration. For example, with....
- The velvet pouch people: they are too lazy to go and find real velvet, we know by now that when they tell you "we can't guarantee" it really means, "it's not a big enough job for us to care and so we'll notify you a few days later that we failed miserably without even trying". So we cut the conversation short and emailed many more suppliers who hopefully have velvet in stock. We're talking about finding an ordinary textile material in a country in which every mid-sized city has a textile market twice the size of your average home depot. Shouldn't be a formidable challenge, we think. The logo printing on the pouch itself, through this same supplier, was also kind of "iffy" - the story was, well maybe we can do it but we can't guarantee it will be done, or when. Moving on to a new supplier.
- Some of the people responsible for creating a key part inside the ChronoVault have dropped the job because of its difficulty. They at least are very willing to return the mold fee as long as we leave them alone and stop bothering them with out outlandish requirements for flat surfaces, sharp corners, and sticking to the dimensions shown on the drawings. This is an example of what the Chinese proverb "八九不离十" (Ba Jiu Bu Li Shi) really means. The proverb literally translates to "8 and 9 aren't far from 10". Well in this case, 3-4mm were thought not to be too different from 1.1mm and so the part is worthless as it won't fit with everything else.
Not all is going wrong though: the overlays came out looking very professional, the outer shell after a few revisions was textured correctly and is much stronger than we anticipated, and all PCB prototypes are working correctly.
We are now back in China carrying things forward - showing up at the factories and looking over the workers' shoulders to ensure they don't mess anything up. This way it's really a lot smoother and we may be able to up the number of units for our launch. Things here really are based to a large extent on friendship - many vendors won't go out of their way to find a material to make a bit more money, but they will make an effort if there's a personal connection and if you get them a bit drunk and speak some Mandarin. Imagine a Chinese showing up at a US factory and speaking broken English in the hope of befriending the boss and getting 250 pieces of anything done, and you realize how good we actually have it - as long as we're willing to deal with the living conditions.
UPDATE
The arousal inducer boss went on a mission to find out what happened with the broken arousal inducers. The reason we call him the best supplier is that he would do something like this. He had already divided the motors into two bags (working/defective), but possibly forgot to label them, so the worker took both bags! It's good news, because it means we can just buy him a permanent marker and it shouldn't happen again.
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I have been in locked and controlled my a Mistress at distance for many years now, and would be very interested in this product. Do you have a beta test program. I would love to test, report, and help in any way, to help making this product a realization.
Regards,
tb