4 ms·

Can you imagine even being a one-man shop making 222 bespoke soap dispensers to some absurd spec AND jumping through all the documentation hoops that are requir

by bagels 2y ago

Can you imagine even being a one-man shop making 222 bespoke soap dispensers to some absurd spec AND jumping through all the documentation hoops that are required for only $150k? I wouldn't take that job. Sounds awful.

wmf 2y ago
You also need to provide exact replacement parts for 50 years so you should probably make 666 of them just to be safe.
- cenamus 2y ago
  But you also get paid for those
JohnBooty 2y ago
Yeah. People who haven't done manufacturing may laugh, but depending on how many custom parts there are you could easily spend most or all of that $150K just on the molds/tooling. Now, like you said... the root cause here is probably some absurd spec that prevents them from using some existing commercial soap dispenser whose costs have already been amortized. Then again, maybe the spec isn't absurd. The C-17 may need to fly in contested airspace. Maybe damage control is a concern. Maybe they can't use commercial soap dispensers because they're plastic and they don't want the plane to fill up with toxic fumes from burning plastic. That is a random guess. I have no idea. I couldn't find pictures of the soap dispenser, but here's apparently a urinal from some version of the Globemaster. I get the feeling these parts are kinda custom... https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photost...
- bagels 2y ago
  You probably also really don't want slippery floors at a critical (or any) time.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    You also can't just drill a couple of holes wherever to mount it and you don't want it turning to a missile if the plane has to do any aggressive maneuvering.
- lazide 2y ago
  Also, every material that goes into them needs to be tracked (with paperwork) since it was mined/smelted.
jjallen 2y ago
I think that isolating their relationship to a single transaction like this is disingenuous. Our government pays this company many billions per year. They likely or should have had extra of these laying around for replacements. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to charge a reasonable amount for everything. But for some reason Boeing continually gets away with being Boeing for some reason.
hackernewds 2y ago
the article believes they should cost $10 though
- Maxion 2y ago
  They probably would if they were made in china, and sold in Walmart by the millions.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    tbh the only solution to the problem is to spend the $250,000 it would probably cost in tooling etc and fill the Boeing ~1,000 order and sell another 99,000 to the public. At $10 each and without paying yourself anything you would probably just about break even.
dmurray 2y ago
Sounds interesting! The first year you learn how hard it is, you spend 80% of your time on compliance documentation and 80% of your budget on tooling. You still don't have a satisfactory product or a mastery of filling out the forms. It drags on into the second year, you're living on ramen but eventually deliver it (if there's one thing the government procurement process is tolerant of, it's delays) and get paid. The third year you take on a additional contract, for 200 toilet flushes or whatever. New manufacturing challenges, but at least you're getting the paperwork down. After a few more jobs, you've cracked it. You start bidding for all the military's bathroom-related contracts. At five or six contracts a year, you have a million or two rolling in (and low manufacturing costs - remember, the spec is such that you can produce it for 80x lower) and you've hired five employees. By year five, the only thing you care about improving is sales. You still have 5 machine shop staff, paid well but not enough to make them wealthy. You focus on hiring ex-military brass and making them sales reps and lobbyists. You're into tens of millions of revenue, that is, profit. Year 8, you sell the thing to Northrop or to a private equity firm and go retire on an island.
- neilv 2y ago
  If you can pull it off as a worker-owned co-op (and don't ruin it in year 8, but keep on working at the scale you want), that's a really nice business. Though you might want to also take on some non-government contracts, both to keep everyone busy in between government contract demands on their roles, and to reduce the risk of having "only one customer".
- ryandvm 2y ago
  I worked on a government software contractor that ended up growing from 10 people to 300 people in about 8 years and sold to Booz Allen Hamilton for around $50 million. You absolutely nailed it. Sadly I didn't get much of a payday out of it.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    Any thought what you should have done differently, with the information available at the time?
mjevans 2y ago
I wonder what's special enough for this to be different from certified aviation grade equipment? It'd be nice it they could either make a bunch of a design (usefully) for the military to fulfill mil-spec, or if they could take an existing design and just make it in a mil-spec compliant way.
- rocqua 2y ago
  Boeing could have specced some weird stuff on the dispenser, just to make it harder to get elsewhere. Things like impact resistance, yield strength in a fire, or counter-rotating threads to prevent it shaking out.

by bagels 2y ago

wmf 2y ago

You also need to provide exact replacement parts for 50 years so you should probably make 666 of them just to be safe.

cenamus 2y ago
But you also get paid for those

JohnBooty 2y ago

Yeah. People who haven't done manufacturing may laugh, but depending on how many custom parts there are you could easily spend most or all of that $150K just on the molds/tooling. Now, like you said... the root cause here is probably some absurd spec that prevents them from using some existing commercial soap dispenser whose costs have already been amortized. Then again, maybe the spec isn't absurd. The C-17 may need to fly in contested airspace. Maybe damage control is a concern. Maybe they can't use commercial soap dispensers because they're plastic and they don't want the plane to fill up with toxic fumes from burning plastic. That is a random guess. I have no idea. I couldn't find pictures of the soap dispenser, but here's apparently a urinal from some version of the Globemaster. I get the feeling these parts are kinda custom... https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photostream/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photost...

bagels 2y ago
You probably also really don't want slippery floors at a critical (or any) time.
- XorNot 2y ago
  You also can't just drill a couple of holes wherever to mount it and you don't want it turning to a missile if the plane has to do any aggressive maneuvering.
lazide 2y ago
Also, every material that goes into them needs to be tracked (with paperwork) since it was mined/smelted.

jjallen 2y ago

I think that isolating their relationship to a single transaction like this is disingenuous. Our government pays this company many billions per year. They likely or should have had extra of these laying around for replacements. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to charge a reasonable amount for everything. But for some reason Boeing continually gets away with being Boeing for some reason.

hackernewds 2y ago

the article believes they should cost $10 though

Maxion 2y ago
They probably would if they were made in china, and sold in Walmart by the millions.
- blitzar 2y ago
  tbh the only solution to the problem is to spend the $250,000 it would probably cost in tooling etc and fill the Boeing ~1,000 order and sell another 99,000 to the public. At $10 each and without paying yourself anything you would probably just about break even.

dmurray 2y ago

Sounds interesting! The first year you learn how hard it is, you spend 80% of your time on compliance documentation and 80% of your budget on tooling. You still don't have a satisfactory product or a mastery of filling out the forms. It drags on into the second year, you're living on ramen but eventually deliver it (if there's one thing the government procurement process is tolerant of, it's delays) and get paid. The third year you take on a additional contract, for 200 toilet flushes or whatever. New manufacturing challenges, but at least you're getting the paperwork down. After a few more jobs, you've cracked it. You start bidding for all the military's bathroom-related contracts. At five or six contracts a year, you have a million or two rolling in (and low manufacturing costs - remember, the spec is such that you can produce it for 80x lower) and you've hired five employees. By year five, the only thing you care about improving is sales. You still have 5 machine shop staff, paid well but not enough to make them wealthy. You focus on hiring ex-military brass and making them sales reps and lobbyists. You're into tens of millions of revenue, that is, profit. Year 8, you sell the thing to Northrop or to a private equity firm and go retire on an island.

neilv 2y ago
If you can pull it off as a worker-owned co-op (and don't ruin it in year 8, but keep on working at the scale you want), that's a really nice business. Though you might want to also take on some non-government contracts, both to keep everyone busy in between government contract demands on their roles, and to reduce the risk of having "only one customer".
ryandvm 2y ago
I worked on a government software contractor that ended up growing from 10 people to 300 people in about 8 years and sold to Booz Allen Hamilton for around $50 million. You absolutely nailed it. Sadly I didn't get much of a payday out of it.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  Any thought what you should have done differently, with the information available at the time?

mjevans 2y ago

I wonder what's special enough for this to be different from certified aviation grade equipment? It'd be nice it they could either make a bunch of a design (usefully) for the military to fulfill mil-spec, or if they could take an existing design and just make it in a mil-spec compliant way.

rocqua 2y ago
Boeing could have specced some weird stuff on the dispenser, just to make it harder to get elsewhere. Things like impact resistance, yield strength in a fire, or counter-rotating threads to prevent it shaking out.