Manufacturing for Engineering Products - Small Investment

Widgets.

Simple sheet metal products of some sort.
If you can design a particularly useful unique bracket/strap/fixing (or widget!) which could be widely used in your local industries then you may have a successful product. Nails and things like that are simple but already widely available.
Maybe look for products which are difficult to source in your locality or are more expensive than is reasonable.
Del

Hi Kishor,

I would suggest whatever you finally decide, make something to sell to the general public.

They tend to pay a perceived value for an item they want and not what it costs, unlike engineering products.

Best of luck,

John

I totally agree with you there.

Most of my work is for other engineers or people with some engineering savvy.

They generally did not want the thing to break in the first instance and certainly don't want to pay much to have it fixed.

On the other hand my wife makes metal craft and markets it through her own and other art galleries, where people buy things because they want them, not because they need them, so price is much less of an issue.

Try to target the people with disposable income, not poor people like us ( probably making a bit of an assumption there!! ).

Here in the UK there are lots of people who have not been in the slightest bit affected by the economic downturn, these are the kind you need to be selling to.

BF

Hi Brian,

I posted the answer because many years ago (30+) I had a customer called Hydrep who surprise, surprise, repaired hydraulic cylinders etc.

But he also made things to sell to "Joe public" such as, a bent piece of wire you put over the end if your tooth paste tube to get at the last bit (remember metal tooth paste tubes) also a frame to take a tile to put your tea pot on (remember tea pots)

He said that steel he used for engineering jobs returned 16p a pound where his bits and bobs made £1 a pound.

Best regards,

John

Hi John

Another very important factor is " risk vs reward"

I develop machinery for agriculture, from concept to finished product. The work is both interesting and challenging, I work alone and do everything in house, so I am responsible for all the CAD, fabrication, machining, hydraulics, electronics, painting and assemblly testing etc.

At best I will return about 100% mark up on my costs. This I would class as "high risk low return". As I am writing this post I am also skimming a cylinder head for a tractor engine. It took 10 mins of my time to set up and I will get £45, barring any unforseen mishaps this should be a "low risk high return" job.

My wife often gets me to make garden obelisks and weather vanes etc for sale in her gallery. For an investment of a couple of hundered pounds for some 2mm mild steel sheet and some black round bar plus your time you can easily turn this into a few thousand ( provided of course you have a market for your creations ).

The point I am trying to make is that the product itself should be low cost/low risk.

If you are looking for a challenge then the challenge should be to develop the processes used to produce that product, then you are keeping the risk "in house".

Many years ago I made a pantograph for my plasma cutter, it has a simple automatic torch height control. My wife being the artist can quickly rustle up a design for an ornament, place the design on the pantograph and trace round it, giving a pretty much instant result.

I am seriously tempted to build a CNC plasma to make more of this stuff as it is much less stress than building agri machinery and the challenge can be to develop the processes.

Sorry to have rambled on so much but I could write volumes on this subject.

Should probably be posting this one as off topic!!

cheers

Brian

I have traveled a bit and I have seen one item that is in dire need in many third world countries. Wiper blades. They are hard for many localities to get and as such are hot items to steal. Also, fairly easy to manufacture.

Some sort of product made up of (mostly) existing components or modules built by others that when put together in a certain way add more value than the sum of their parts.

It doesn't get much more simpler than this.

If you want something more specific you will need to provide more information to help narrow down the potential product ideas.

I suspect everyone reading this page is looking for exactly the same thing.

Best of luck.

Exactly.

If we all knew that we would all be millionaires.

With your question, you have transitioned from the Engineering side of Manufacturing to the Business side of Manufacturing.

My first suggestion is two-fold; take a Marketing Class at a local University - it will teach you the basics of Market Analysis. In concert with the class, visit the senior women of your family: Mother, Aunts, etc... and query them regarding what kind of items would make their lives more efficient.

Hopefully this does not come off as chauvinistic, but as a general observation, although the male typically earns a higher percentage of the household income, it is the female that generally drives economic spending. It simply boils down to women having a greater influence over general consumer economics; with life/household management (Domestic Engineering) the driver behind their activities.

The second most significant market sector are youth... what do the teenagers and 20-somethings in your area want/need.

Learn about your target consumer, what do they perceive as a need and what type of item/product would they find value in? Also, keep your query local. You will not find tangible item-specific suggestions here, simply for the reason that we are a global perspective and if you're looking for a business venture with minimal capital initial investment, look local, not global. Sure, web-based marketing can reach the world but then your marketing has to cater to multiple languages/cultures with different values/needs/wants. And your financial system would have to allow for multiple currencies.

Manufacturing for the general consumer is about making living life more enjoyable and easier. Once you have identified a couple potential items via your newly acquired marketing toolset, then you can evaluate them with your engineering/manufacturing tool set and identify what it takes to not only design/manufacture the item, but what it takes to bring the item to the consumer (advertising/packaging/store displays/shipping) all of which are a part of the cost of making/selling a product.

Now on the other hand, if you're looking at providing to the business/manufacturing sector and not the consumer sector, your approach would be the same regarding market analysis, but instead of looking at things that make living life easier, you'll be looking at things that make doing business easier.

How has the post 2009 global economic condition impacted local businesses and manufacturers? Those that have survived have had to become very lean. And being lean, those they still employ are stretched to the limit, wearing multiple hats, working longer hours, some for less compensation. Many manufactures have slimed down their support functions and are more focused on their core competencies.

For example - Company 'A' has 5 manufacturing cells that make custom designed widgets and use to have an internal staff of process and manufacturing engineers that would ID what manufacturing cell modifications would be needed in order to produce a custom widget. But in todays economic condition, they had to acknowledge that they are not an engineering firm but a widget manufacture and to survive they reduced/eliminated their internal engineering support. Or maybe they cut their Maintenance department. Bottom-line, maybe the engineered product best suited for your market is... outsourced engineering.

Only a market analysis of your local region can answer these questions. So asking us is a good first step, but asking your neighbor is a good second step.

A 3D printer can replicate bits of itself, and construct lots of little plastic bits beside. www.reprap.org

I would rather make 100 items at $1000/piece than make 1000 items @ $100/piece.

It is not what you can make but what local market needs. When I started my business I put more than six months to understand niche I wanted to get into and product risk and reward.

Money is secondary in the business. It is your homework before you start a business. Finding local or state you live and national needs before you think of going international.

Most of the business fails because of day dreaming and doing things which does not make common people life little easier.

If I knews which part of India you come I may be able share my experience and guide you if I have some in that area. My business is in space electronic adhesive and it was purely to support Indian space adhesive needs which other country will not provide on timely and quality which is needed.

I think you start in following way -

• Make a list of products/ services /systems in which you have sufficient knowledge and which you can sell.
• Now shortlist items which have potential in market.
• study players in the market who mfg. the products and who only trade with their app. share.
• First try to trade these products from present mfg.
• Create your own base of customers OR taste the market.
• Get confidence and start mfg.