Originally posted by tim60 But I never understood competition in the electricity retailing. The companies, about six of them, sell power delivered on exactly the same power lines, no quality of services issue with who I choose, and they were not proud enough of their prices to display the prices on their web page - you had to ring them up. And they only seemed to get a better deal when you were calling them to say you were changing to someone else because they had a better deal.
The electric utilities have been doing that here for some time now too. It escapes me how they can say that the electrons delivered to my home are the ones that I bought from "X" utility in some other part of the world.
The program hasn't really caught on though.
People don't care where it comes from, they just want the light to come on when they flip the switch.
Originally posted by tim60 At least all the (specialised) buyers of the stuff you make in that big shed know that no-one ever pays list price for a product from the big shed and that the whole process is a sport of wheeling and dealing.
With a $300,000,000 price tag one would think that small savings here or there wouldn't make much difference.
But.
Where I work there has been concern about the added cost of defects caused to the inside of the wing during the build process. The mechanics who work inside the wing were causing scratches and such while crawling around inside the tanks doing their jobs. Each defect was costing about $4,000 to repair (documentation is a large part of the cost to repair defects, no matter how small).
Much energy has been devoted to reducing these defects of late. At a meeting last week numbers (everything is quantified numerically there) were announced. Over a period where 20 wings were observed, 10 before and 10 after measures were implemented to reduce defects, a cost savings was realized at nearly $500,000.
A half million dollars in build cost may be small considering the cost of 10 finished and delivered planes, but that still is a chunk of change.
And I bet that the competition faces similar challenges at reducing build costs in an effort to maximize profits.