A Rant

[pgandw]

Like it or not, the companies need customers; therefore, the customers' money talks and the rest is bovine by-product, as the saying goes.

As the economy deteriorates, customer service is the key to survival. Clearly, there are many companies who fail to realize that new reality. Why should we help a company like that survive?

In addition to customer service, you have to develop your supply chain. Without an efficient and organized supply chain focused on your end product, you can't get to good customer service.

The comment about helping a company develop a new product line is interesting, because it supposes that a customer has some sort of obligation to assist someone else in making a profit without sharing in that largess in any way. That is a false business model from the get-go. My time is as valuable to me as the manufacturer's time is to them. If I want a better automobile, I don't do a ton of R&D work for the auto manufacturer for nothing; I tell them what I expect and if they don't come up to scratch I take my money elsewhere. If they do, then I remain a loyal customer, but I don't work for free.

There is a lot wrong with the MRR world, not the least of which is the dictation by the companies of what models will be made available. Entire segments of history are ignored because they must not seem either popular and/or profitable. That is incredibly short-sighted, even for the Chinese who now dominate the market.

Do not tell the customers what they can have; find out what they want is the operating rule in the world of today, because if they don't, someone else will take over who will.

And crap will always be unacceptable.

I'm not sure which way you are leaning Mountain Man. If the importers/manufacturers appear to produce for markets that seem popular and/or profitable, are they not finding out what the majority of their customers want? How is that dictating what models will be produced? Why would I as an importer want to bring in a model that I foresee is not going to be either popular and/or profitable?

But let's be specific. Blackstone runs semi-annual surveys of what the HOn3 community wants. Does that mean the top choice gets produced next? No. There are many other considerations. But the most popular models are more likely to get produced in the near future. PSC/MMI surveys their customers by announcing a variety of projects, and seeing which ones get responded to with orders. BLI does the same as PSC/MMI.

The problem is that there are many of us in niches that do not appear to have sufficient numbers to sell out a production run (3,000) or so. Our niche doesn't have enough responses on a survey or enough pre-orders to justify production. Car companies do that all the time - they drop models (and even makes) that are no longer selling in sufficient volume.

I don't get the customer model of sitting around waiting for a manufacturer to read my mind as to what I want, and hope that my wants are popular enough that it will be produced when I want it. If I'm the boss, do I sit at my desk and hope my subordinate produces the report I need in the format I want? And complain to others when what I want doesn't appear? After all, I'm his customer for the report. The most effective procedure is a negotiation over the report. I say what I want. The subordinate asks a couple of questions to clarify what I'm looking for, so that he doesn't waste his effort in producing the wrong rock. And if he's sharp, he'll ask what I'm going to do with the report, and when I will be reading it. Asking what I'm going to do with the product allows him to come up with alternatives that might better satisfy me than my original requirements. The when gives it priority. But I have taken my valuable time to explain what I want and answer questions so that I get a better product or a product that better suits my needs and desires.

As a subordinate, nothing is more disheartening than the wrong rock model. "Bring me a rock." "That's not the rock I wanted. Bring me another rock....." And the cycling continues. Whereas a little involvement upfront by the person expecting a specific rock could have made life easier for both of us. The parallels to model railroad locomotive production are obvious.

BTW, I have come to love superiors who say everything is priority one. They have effectively ceded prioritization back to me, without realizing they have done so.

Back to model railroading. If I'm proactive as a customer, I'm far more likely to get what I want. If at a minimum, I don't participate in the surveys, how do I expect them to know what I want? If I want a Rogers 1880s 2-6-0 produced - not likely to be high on anybody's survey - then securing a set of plans, and perhaps a couple of photos, along with 50 orders from my friends and me, is far more likely to move the model off the "someday" list into the actually produced list. Or if I can show an importer that an existing mechanism has the right driver spacing, and all it needs is new boiler and tender castings, a run of only 1,000 begins to make financial sense. But without more than a survey response, who can blame the importer for pursuing the top ten on the survey?

I realize that the cooperative model is not popular with many on this list. As you pointed out, the cooperative model requires the customer's time. And there are way too many suppliers that can't be bothered with cooperation, either. But Deming and others in the process improvement world have proven to me the benefits of the cooperative model. I have seen how much failure to repeatedly review requirements with vendors prior to (and during) production has cost in my world of commercial construction. Expecting a vendor to comply with a set of written specs, and no further direction or negotiation, costs far more in the long run than the upfront involvement.

my thoughts, your choices
Fred W