The process of finishing a custom project with jpw

The process to finalize a custom project

First of all you are probably not going to commit to a product before you can see it in some form. That is why computer graphics work for us.

We will send you some examples of parts and how they work, or we may design a whole system. The idea here is that we will keep track of the design time we spend, and we may or may not add that into the final cost of the project. Many ideas are transferable to other projects. We can give a visual idea of our capability, without having to do a lot of design work. That is something that we will not have to charge for. The idea is to get closer to what you would like to have in the long run without having to do a lot of design work. The closer a customer can come to getting us a design idea that is accurate, the less time we will need to spend. Please see this blog about Napkin sketches. This example worked well for us. Dimensions are important. Please include them, and do not worry so much about sketching to scale. If you do have graph paper that will help you do the sketch by making the sketch seem more to scale. At the Idea phase it is important to come together to understand what the customer needs, and what our capability is to fill that need.

Then we look at a preliminary cost, and we tell the customer about a 50% deposit to secure a ship date.

If that is ok, we schedule production time. Between the production time and the time we scheduled it, there is a period of between 4 to 6 weeks. This is when materials are selected and purchased for the project.

If there is a need for materials that we do not stock, and are special order, this may require some extra time. However usually those materials are available from a vendor within that time period. The customer will be notified if there is a special wait time for the items in question.

I put the project on something called custom Job status report. It is a spread sheet that has all the slots for things that we need to know including what to do next. These things are color coded so we can glance at the project and see what the status is.

I check that report on a regular basis (especially when I realize I have these projects pending) and see who has the priority, or what I need to do to move the project along.

Often customers have many other things to manage, and I understand that. So when the time comes I try to ask the right questions via email.

I always tell customers in spring and summer of the year, there is an issue called priority by pile. We get stuff piled on top of other stuff and the pile gets large. If your stuff is in the pile and you do not contact us, you may not get back to the top of the pile. I may not check the custom job status report because I am too busy, or more likely I have other things I have prioritized. The custom Job status report is designed to re-prioritize those custom projects according to the information that is in the different slots in the spread sheet.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. So call and email, but mostly email works best for me.

This is how we move from idea to product. The edrawings are just a good way to get a model validation for you, and it is not by any means the final step in the process. Read more about edrawings here. Download the edrawing viewer here. This page has edrawings that you can download from the web if you want to look at some interesting frameless cataraft projects. Otherwise you can request an edrawing of any product via email.

We do not schedule or start working a custom project until we get a 50% deposit on a project, and that cost could be an estimate or a firm bid. It always includes design time, because that is a huge part of the cost of a custom project.

It is important to note: A project is started when we have the 50% deposit, and before we receive that deposit you are under no obligation to join into the project. After that deposit is received, we will do our best to stick to a time line that we establish to finish the project. Therefore JPW takes some risk in spending a fair amount of time working on the concept by showing different ideas and contributing drawings to the project even before the project starts.

In some cases if the design is unique enough, and especially if there is an NDA involved in the agreement, we will ask for design deposit up front. We cannot estimate the cost of a project with a Non-Disclosure Agreement untill the agreement is signed, and we can start. We cannot estimate what that design cost will be, and so we will use the idea of Benchmarks to estimate what that initial design deposit will be, through a negotiation with the customer.

Order inquiries: shop.jpwinc@gmail.com
Custom & Prototype inquiries: pschoser.jpwinc@gmail.com