How not to fuck up your manufacturing startup

You don't really compete with others as far as your manufacturing process. You are always competing against your own process, trying to streamline by making slight adjustments. For example, the shape of a part is done so that when it is manufactured, it requires less handling. You could have adopted dozens of designs that would have performed equally well. But all the other designs would have extended the manufacturing by 1 or 2 minutes. The material you select is also based on manufacturing time. So, when it is all said and done, if you have cut manufacturing time of 10 parts, you've gain about 10 minutes. 10 minutes times number of unit produced represent substantial savings.

As far as how your competitors are doing it, it is easy to be mislead. Unless you have somebody on the inside who has access to details, you don't know the exact circumstances. It may be that they are using this machine or that one because they got a real good deal on it. Not because it is faster or easier to operate. Or they are using this material not because it is required , or easier to handle or cheaper but because they plan on introducing a new product that absolutely requires this type of material and they want their crew to be very familiar with it. So unless you know for a fact the decision process within your competitors process, you may be going down a rabbit hole.

I wouldn't recommend any inexperienced entrepreneur to jump into this without having at least a successful track record in sales or product development. Even then, you'll be drinking out of a firehose. But it is doable if you're prepared to work very hard.

/r/Entrepreneur Thread Parent