In 2006, a US client came to us with a sprocket that had been manufactured in another company. The sprocket was thick. What the other vender did was moulding first, then machined both faces. Then, they manually trim the teeth. You could even see the marks that the knives left on the teeth. The complaints from the client were:

1)    Sprocket teeth were always trimmed in bad shape. Some even almost lost teeth.

2)    Machining on the faces left uneven thickness of teeth.

3)    Due to the poor process above, rejection rate was very high.

4)    Lead time was very long.

5)    Unit price was way high.

Our engineer reviewed the sprockets and proposed for some design change. According to our experience, the modification we suggested wouldn’t weaken the tensile strength of the sprockets. Part could be moulded without any machining or manual trimming. There was no other choice for the client but giving us a try.

We did and we succeeded. New sprockets passed client’s mechanical testing. We lowered the unit price by 50% of what they paid before.

Before