The regulator has three inlets each, at the time, home to three items. All of which were purchased from one dominant supplier.
1) an o’ring
2) a brass cage and
3) the collet
The brass cage served to create a lip to hold the collet in place. We determined that we could simply tool the ‘lip’ into the body of the unit. Less parts equals less risk of individual parts failing, all positive. On approaching our supplier to share that we would only need two items out of the previous shopping list of three, we were told that they came ‘as a set’.
We considered our options…
1) Change nothing: tool no improvements. Buy three items, use three items.
2) Buy a ‘set of 3’: the brass cage, would be thrown away / written off. With 3 inlets in the secondary regulator, this would equal 3 brass cages for every one regulator manufactured.
3) Do it ourself - Engineer the lip, tool our own collet, improve the product, reduce waste and prevent unnecessary spend.
Fast Forward 6 years…
· The lip, previously created by a brass cage, is tooled into our secondary regulators. There are close to 300,000 pieces in the trade since that point with a less than 0.001% return rate under warranty.
· The collet was tooled, to our same exacting standards. They were all branded. 8 million are now in trade
Fast forward another few years…
From the starting position of the collet there was an organic move into the fittings range. Our industry was being burdened by excessive lead times and incredibly high minimum order quantities from other suppliers. We tooled each one, generic in their form - BLUE in their colour and offered low or no minimum order quantities. We committed to them being ‘in stock’, and gave each one a lifetime guarantee. Since this point there are three million fittings in the trade.
And what of the purple fitting in the photo? In the words of Bob Ross ‘a happy accident’. A one of one - reminding us that it is ok to be different and stand out - even when talking about ‘fitting(s) in’.