Words from Ron Hollis

Last week we released the 5^th video production of Johnny Quickparts (QuickFlix).  Quickparts is dedicated to continuously improving (and really doing it) as well as trying new things to see what works.  Creating a character and a video production in our industry is definitely in the category of doing new things.

It has been a great learning experience. It turns out that productions are very complicated, tedious and time consuming. Our team has shot hours of footage that they write, edit, rehearse, perform, re-perform, edit again and publish. This is definitely a program for a young, energetic team that does not realize how much is involved…sometimes ignorance is bliss!

We are very proud of the product of our Marketing team (and all of the newly found actors).  We think this series is slowly enhancing our industry by making typically boring manufacturing information interesting and adding the human element of “fiction imitating reality”.

Please go to Quickparts QuickFlix and check out this latest episode, learn something new about SLA and share with your family and friends.

I recently read a good article written by Jack Lander in the Inventors Magazine on how many cavities to consider when buying your tooling.  While I don’t know Jack, I think he did a good job of making a complicated challenge for many new inventors into a simple assessment.  You can find the article here (Inventor-June 2010-How to lower per unit costs-).

This consideration is critical for the new inventor with a very limited budget and is already suffering from sticker shock on the cost of the tooling for their new widget. After they recover a bit and realize that many of these tools cost as much as new car, they start sharpening their pencils and really fine tune the sales  projections….maybe we won’t sell a million in the first week?

One area that Jack did discuss is the difference in steel and aluminum tooling. As technologies continue to evolve the difference is the material for tooling is merging such that the capabilities of aluminum tooling are more than adequate for most new product launches. If you have a sure projection of 100,000’s of units in a short time, then steel is the way to go. However, if you volumes will start this high, then you have some much larger challenges ahead, such as cash flow, inventory, logistics, etc.

In summary, the information provided is quite useful and something many inventors want to ignore. They want to buy what has the smallest sticker price today without realizing that there is a real financial penalty that can come with success of their product.  Also, it’s important to realize that there are many other manufacturing solutions that can help.  Check out the encyclopedia at Quickparts.com (www.quickparts.com) to learn more.

Quickparts has proudly been responsible for doing many 1^st in our industry. We invented online instant quoting, changed the way a customer expects to be treated, and optimized the business model that is a win for the customer, manufacturer and the shareholders.

Part of our culture is to always be changing and pushing the leading edge. Our marketing approaches follow the same stringent expectations of innovation.  I am proud to say we recently pushed the edge a bit more and tried something very “out of the box” for a company in our industry.

In the midwest US, we have placed two billboards outside the entrances of a very important and large customer. Turns out that such a simple and developed marketing approach could create some interesting questions for us. As an analytical company that depends on data and numbers to drive our business, we did not know we how we could justify the marketing ROI for a billboard. Of course we got the easy data, like number of cars per hour that pass the billboard, but how many of those were our prospects, would they see it, do they care, would it translate, how would they remember, what would we say?

So, for one of the few times in our history, we just “hoped” that they would work. So far, the assessment is still pending but the intangible experience of placing a billboard and seeing our brand in large form factor on the side of the road has been cool.

Now the question will become, where else should we place billboards?

Wanna see them??

Billboard-1

Billboard-2

Here is the latest published blog in PDD…..

http://www.pddnet.com/column-dr-ron-hollis-10-years-ago-a-paradigm-shift-began-020510/

I guess this makes this a blog within a blog?

Ron

Quickparts is a proud supporter of NASA and the US-lead exploration of space. Being a leader in providing low volume custom parts for product development can provide some very interesting experiences.

We are very proud to have been able to support the development of the Robonaut 2. This is a very cool robot that is being developed to go deep in space so you don’t have to.  I was able to see the predecessor, Robonaut, and was very impressed.

Quickparts was the provider of the parts for the Mr. Robonaut 2.  We were able to leverage the right manufacturing processes to support the technical requirements, project lead times and tight budget.

Check out the article from FOXNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/02/04/nasa-unveils-robonaut?slide=2

Quickparts.com (www.quickparts.com) has launched a new video series starring Johnny Quickparts. He will be sharing his adventures in product development. Johnny is the star engineer in Better Be Running! Tools to Drive Design Success, an “almost” best selling book on product development and manufacturing.

A video series with a common character is a very unique approach to marketing in manufacturing. Most manufacturing information is very dull and boring. The video information that is available is typically shots of a machine doing something….great for 10 seconds, then dull after that….some may know the feeling.

There will be another 15 episodes this year and then the execs at NBC/CBS/ABC will decide if they cancel it (if they too busy, then we will decide the future).

Please check out the video and let us know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnnyQuickparts

I love Amazon! I have always been a loyal customer to Amazon and their products. I bought one of the first Kindles upon release years ago. While it did not adequately serve my needs, I was anxious for the future generations.

So, here comes the Kindle DX. It is bigger, faster and better. I bought and tried to implement it into my reading system, but was unable to get the value I needed. I am a reader for the acquisition of information and knowledge. I don’t just read for the sake of reading. Most of my reading is non-fiction works about business or biographies. So, when I read, I try to process the information for application, which requires me to make many marks and notes in my reading.

The Kindle DX does not allow you to easily mark the text and does not support freehand at all.

So, here comes the Sony Reader Daily Edition PRS-900. While not as cool looking as the Kindle, it did support freehand note taking, so I decided to give it a shot. I sold my DX and placed an order for the Sony Reader. Thus my journey of horrible customer service begins.

• Placed order on 12/27/09 from their website (www.sonystyle.com). It showed a ship date of 1/15/10. A long wait, but hey, this is a great product
• Upon ordering, I get my email confirmation for the order
• On 1/15/10, I had not heard anything, so I check my account online and it says “processing” and ready to ship on 1/12 (odd, I thought, so I emailed customer care for an update)
• I get a response saying their system is behind sometimes and the dates may not be right. They would be shipping the product soon.
• I wait until the end of the week and check again. Same status. It’s now a week later than promised and NO real information.
• I send another email to customer care and get a response that their systems are behind and they can’t really tell when the product would ship, but it would be soon

NOW for the fun

• On 1/26/10, I get an email from Sony’s system saying they have CANCELLED my order. Trying to diffuse the information, there is a small comment says there was a failure to communicate with the bank.
• I EMAILED and they said the order cancelled but they were not sure why (interestingly, the email they tell to inquire about issues lets you know they would be handling your request within the next 5 BUSINESS DAYS)
• I CALLED that night. I get a nice guy that looks up the account and says, it was cancelled…Why, I ask, “not sure, something about the communication with the bank”. We think you should call your bank. FYI: The credit card I used was a SONY CREDIT CARD from CHASE BANK….they were probably still in business.
• I asked why they would just send an email cancelling the order instead of telling the customer there is an issue and to call. “I’m not sure why we don’t do that, it’s the way the system works”
• What are my options? We can transfer you to Sales and you can place the order there. I tell them that I don’t want to wait another month, so to have my account marked for special shipment to get me back to the front of the queue. “Sir, we can’t do that. Once the order is cancelled, there are no options, that’s the way the system works.”…
• I ask for his boss…after 10 minutes of waiting, I get his manager. Another nice guy who re-iterates their inability to help me all because of the system.
• He tells me he will be sure to report this issue….”Great, that helps a lot, NOT!”
• He tells me to send an email to sonylistens@amsony.com . Pretty funny email, I thought, because they may listen but they damn sure don’t help.

So, it’s always the systems fault why you can actually serve your customer.

How can a company with the brand of Sony and history be so poor at serving their customers? They should stick to developing products and using distributors to manage the customer relationship because these guys suck!

The good news….I have a greater appreciation for the customer service of Amazon and their ability to serve their customers AND have systems….go figure!

While I am not a huge Thomas Friedman fan, in his book, The World is Flat, he did expose for public discussion the changes that have occurred in our world.   With the advent of instant communication, the world is much smaller and much flatter than any time in history.

I recently ran across the following quote or statement from Friedman that is appropriate to our time.

Friedman stated, “There are still two really important things that can’t be commoditized.  Fortunately, America still has one of them: imagination.  What your citizens imagine now matters more than ever because they can act on their own imaginations farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before- as individuals.  In such a world, societies that can nurture people with the ability to imagine and spin off new ideas will thrive.”

Being in the product development world for my entire career, I can appreciate his point more than most and confirm that he has this absolutely right!  Over the past 20 years, we have seen a complete transformation of the product development world that allows ideas to be created in hours instead of weeks.   At the end of the day, it comes down to the tools available to empower one to release his imagination and convert the imaginary into the reality.  There are 3 major tools that have evolved to make it easy for anyone to empower their imagination for the creation of something new.

1) CAD.  Some of the most powerful tools that have freed the imagination of man is CAD (Computer-Aided Design).  This is the canvas of creation. This is tool that allows a person to translate their thoughts and ideas into a representation of reality. Some 20 years ago, CAD was still an electronic version of paper and all ideas were broken into an archaic and difficult language of engineering drawings and 2-dimensional representations. Today, a guy in his underwear watching a ball game can load Google Sketch-up and design his idea in a 3-dimensional language that represents reality. If he designs a new, fancy cup to drink his coffee, then it will actually look like a cup, not a bunch lines to represent a cup.  These new CAD products are much easier to use, affordable, and very powerful.

2) Rapid Prototyping. Now you have a cool design that represents your imagination, what’s next? Again, some 20 years ago you were stuck. The option was to go to a model maker that would cost thousands and take weeks to turn your design into a prototype.  This is definitely not a way to free the masses to imagine and create, but to stifle creativity and leave it to the companies that have figured out how to make money with their product. Today, with the evolution of rapid prototyping, the world of design to reality is AMAZING! A design can be transformed from the electronic representation of a design to reality in a few hours for very little money.  This allows virtual products to be evaluated under the circumstances of physics, reality and usability. This allows the design to evolve very rapidly from an unproven concept to a real, functional and worthwhile product.  A designer can finish his cup design this afternoon, login to Quickparts.com to order his prototype and have it delivered tomorrow morning. From imagination to design to reality in day!

3) Low Cost Manufacturing.  Many times the purpose of imagination and development is to solve a problem of the world. In the case where the problem only exists for the one person that designs the solution, then a prototype may suffice. However, odds are high that a problem for one is a problem for many. So, there is a market of your design. Again, 20 years ago it would be very difficult to have your design manufactured cost effectively. You would have to invest huge dollars to get started. Today, the world is great. With the evolution of manufacturing technologies and the mass expansion of manufacturing capacity with countries like China being an email away, then a product can be setup and manufactured very cost-effectively.

By combining the independent power of these 3 tools, the world of imagination, innovation, problem solving, product development and creation are highly accessible to those in the US. We have been blessed to have access to such powerful resources as developers of tomorrow and consumers today. It is with these tools that the US can maintain our world-leader status as the innovators of the world as long as we are willing to accept the challenge of creation and not try to offshore it as well.

Imagination is the seed of creation.  Creation is as God-like as you can get.

This week marks the 10 year anniversary of a major paradigm shift in the manufacturing world. January 3, 2000 was the first business day when a designer could sit at his desk, go to to a website, upload his design data for his custom parts and get a quote INSTANTLY and then buy his parts IMMEDIATELY…. All without having to speak a word to a pesty sales person, wait for days to get his quote or get a quote for parts that were already several revisions behind.

It has been 10 years since the launch of Quickparts.com! It has been a decade in which the world shifted under the feet of the dinosaurs of the industry that believed that….

• Customers did not need the convenience of the Internet
• Engineers would not upload their data to a website
• It’s impossible to quote a part without a human expert
• Instant quoting would never stick
• My customers need my help in designing their stuff
• The files are too big to transfer
• Websites are not secure
• This Internet thing is just a fad that will pass
• My customers love me
• My customers are loyal to me and would never leave me for a website
• You can’t take the human element out of manufacturing sales

It has been a decade since Quickparts.com began the journey of making it easy for our customers to buy custom designed parts that meet their needs. We started with the focus being on the customer and have worked every day since to make the experience of the customer unlike any experience they have had in manufacturing and more like the experiences they expect from the retail stores they visit.

By executing on this focus of the customer, we have been able to disprove all the naysayers. After 10 years, our competitors have realized that we were right and for them to continue to exist; they must look more like Quickparts and less like themselves.

Over the decade, we have learned many things. One of them is that the challenging technologies of online instant quoting were not the really hard parts. It was the development of the rest of the technologies and systems that would allow us to handle over 12,000 customers buying over 500,000 custom parts.

It has been a great 10 years for Quickparts.com. We have been able to demonstrate what we believe to be the purpose of business, which is to serve their customers; build leaders; enhance their communities; and provide a return to the stakeholders.

As a founder of this great company, I personally express a sincere Thank You! to all of our customers, team members (past and present) and stake holders for allowing us to enjoy the journey.

Interesting patent APPLICATION recently published by Objet…

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=Aa_HAAAAEBAJ

As the original RP patents begin to expire, it will be very interesting what new patents can take their place and how it affects the industry.  Possibly, if the major IP constraints were removed, then the market could finally break-out of this technical malaise and begin innovating again.