Commodity Codes Suck

Posted by stephens on May 26, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 2 comments

Why is it that, when I either process a stamping or setup a formability simulation for any company in any industry on any continent, I get some proprietary commodity code for a material specification from the customer? Commodity codes suck, and I will tell you why: they are completely useless. Every company that needs sheet steel to manufacture products buys the...

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Another Strike

Posted by stephens on May 22, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants | 5 comments

The discussion on the validity of restrike dies continues with a comment from Eric Kam that I would like to post here instead of comments due to length: It seems to me that the reason that the restrike is more appealing and rational than the trim line correction… by creating an adjustment point closer to the final destination (the conveyor belts and the...

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Costing is not Quoting

Posted by stephens on Oct 4, 2009 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions | 3 comments

There has been much discussion on the web lately about quoting and costing software for stamping dies. Costing is not quoting. The calculated or estimated cost has no practical relation to the quoted price for two reasons. First, the price that will win the work relies exclusively on what the customer is willing to pay. End of story. The customer does not care...

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