Rooster's Revenge

The level of incompetence in this business never seems to decrease over time.

I am talking about the humans that are in a position of management. Strike that. They are in the position of leadership, but provide none.

Leaders create a vision for the future and set achievable goals for the organization to live by.

Instead, management does not focus on the important things, like creating widgets the customer wants to buy and selling those widgets. Make stuff. Sell stuff. Out-perform and out-innovate your competition along the way. That is the bottom line.

Yet, management is stereotypically consumed with micro-managing the business. Kindergarteners have more creative freedom and vision from their teachers.

Lead. Follow. Or get the fuck out of the way.

Here is an overview of how Speedraft helps you save time and money:

[slideshare id=1866960&doc=speedraftoverview-090815153634-phpapp01&w=500]

There was a discussion on a LinkedIn tool and die group recently about how long it takes to quote a progressive die.

One response was simply “two weeks”.

This is wrong. Even assuming it takes two weeks to quote each progressive die, the statement “two weeks”, to be accurate, implies the die shop has 100% conversion.

In other words, the assumption is they convert ALL quotes to sales.

On average, die shops earn one sale for every three quotes.

The quoting math, or qCalculus, then, is two weeks x three quotes = six weeks.

The die shop has to recoup this cost of revenue. How much is it?

Alot.

Assuming the shop burden rate is an average of $65 an hour per person with one person working 40 hours a week to quote, the cost of revenue is 40 hours / week x 6 weeks x $65 / hour, or $15,600.

To put this in perspective, it usually takes four weeks to design the die. It takes 50% longer to just quote one sale.

But wait! It gets worse.

If we assume the “average” progressive die is somewhere between $50,000 and $55,000 to design and build NET of quoting costs, then the cost of revenue is roughly 30%.

In order to maintain a modest profit margin on the job, a $52,000 die build project needs at least $15,600 in engineering changes for the shop to break even.

Yes, break even.

Remember: quoting is not selling.

Here is a two minute video demo of Speedraft technology. The use of mantras is evident here: We eliminate RFQs. This is taken to the next level with ” waiting is not buying” and “quoting is not selling”.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qK8ZdvX54M

Clear. Concise. Compelling.

I stumbled across a news post today by clicking on a link that read “Manufacturing Takes Big Jump”.

So, I click it.

Takes me to an article titled “Manufacturing Index Signals Growth Soon“.

Define “soon”.

Unemployment is up.

Bankruptcies are up.

Federal tax revenues are down.

When the number of manufacturers go down, but the orders of the remaining few go up, doesn’t that mean the few are getting work from the defunct many?

What the article really says is, “Hey, a few economists guessed wrong. The numbers are slightly better than they guessed they would be. We thought it would take 2.5 hours for the Titanic to sink, but the trend is for it to sink in 3.1 hours.”

What they don’t tell you is it will take 4.7 hours to send a Search and Rescue team. So much for the good news.

After attempting to correlate what I live everyday with what the misguided government propaganda contained in the article, I think they should have titled the piece “Someday”.

As in, “Someday, manufacturing will rebound”.

“Someday, we will be out of this worsening economic depression“.

“Someday, journalists will write something meaningful.”

Someday.