Progress in Pieces
I’m back with Progress in Pieces of the protractor! Both of our suppliers have finished their samples, and now it’s just a matter of days before they arrive.
Caption: Parts of the protractor mid-production.
When I opened my email a few weeks ago, I was met with these photos to my surprise. For me, the sheer excitement of seeing these parts made all the late nights on this project worth it. With green-blue coolant still dripping from the tool-marked part, I thanked my contact at HK AA Industrial and asked about an estimated shipment date. These parts still need to go through cleanup, anodizing, and printing before they could be sent to my packaging supplier.
Caption: Video received from the packaging supplier a week before the inner products were halfway through production.
In reality, I had received a packaging video a whole week earlier, and we had—understandably—been a little anxious about the “inner product” factory, as we called it. This highlighted a potential issue during later mass production stages. Different suppliers working at asynchronous speeds. As with most things in engineering and manufacturing, plans rarely unfold without delays or hiccups. That’s unavoidable, but there are steps we can take to prepare for when things eventually do go haywire:
Leave yourself enough space and time. Tight timelines exaggerate and complicate what can be a simple problem, on a project where you get to set the delivery time (I would love to get this to your hands by the end of the year), set a further deadline than you think you are gonna need.
Run simulations and small-scale test runs. Although this may seem costly and unproductive, doing this can often catch issues before thousands of units are stuck halfway through the production line.
Set up communication group chats or email threads. I’m working with only two suppliers on a relatively “simple” product, and even then, things can get messy real quick.
Caption: The protractor blanks, anodized and waiting for laser engraving.
A week more goes by, questions and answers fly back and forth clarifying details in production. Items like:
Where should the ribbon be placed vertically on the box front?
Which corners on the protractor need rounding, and which should be kept sharp
What laser strength will engrave the protractor scales to the effect I want?
What textured paper and paint will be used on the main box?
After sorting these out one by one, the packaging supplier produced the following unboxing video:
Caption: Unboxing the “inner product.”
Another issue gets raised here: although the box is designed to transport the protractor without damage through the use of a foam insert, this same sort of protection cannot be offered in the process of shipping the complete protractors between the two factories.
The solution? Reversing this part of the supply chain—shipping the empty boxes to where the “inner products” are, and packaging there—simultaneously solving both issues of asynchrony and damage during shipment.
For now, we will wait patiently for these black-and-white boxes to arrive on my doorstep in “5 to 7 business days”…