what's at AGD?

[TheJester]

I allways here, "this is out at this place" or, "problems w/ supplier" it seems that AGD does alout of out of house work, what all is done in house? just assembly? why doesn't AGD do more in house work, i would think it would make things run alot smoother, reliable, quicker, and cheaper.

[Quiet]

It takes a lot bigger capital expenditure right off the bat to produce everything 'in house'

That would be my guess

[thevilduk]

i hope you can get somthing out of this information, it was taken directly from the cia world book of facts, 2001 i believe

export
$723 billion

import

$1.148 trillion

total difference
425 billion

[hitech]

There are a lot of reliable manufacturing shops in the area around AGD. They have always taken advantage that. They have "always" used outside manufactures. Doing it yourself isn't always faster/more reliable. Remember, that is all these outside places do. :D

[LaW]

It is actually a lot cheaper to contract out jobs then to have all the equipment and man power to do everything inhouse. It just wouldn't pay off financially

[TheJester]

Originally posted by LaW
It is actually a lot cheaper to contract out jobs then to have all the equipment and man power to do everything inhouse. It just wouldn't pay off financially

how do you figure? the companies that make this stuff are making a profit, they have expenses, they have the equipment, and the man power, which AGD is paying for everytime they order a part, plus they have to make up for their own expenses. don't you guys remember the old, the more hands it goes threw, the more expensive the finial product is? yes it's a heacy start up fee, yes it's not cheap to run a machine shop (we just went threw how much it would cost to make parts in out shop...11 dollars worth of material, magicly factors into 50 bucks an hour worth of labor, when you account for tooling, utilities, material, labor, etc etc.(that's just to break even, not including profits) so take that same 11 dollar worth of material, AGD is paying the 90 bucks or so to have it made, it's paying for transportation, then has to turn around and charge more, because they too want to make profit. where if they did it all in house, they wouldn't have to pay for transportation of the parts, they wouldn't have to be paying the profit margin for the machine shop they send it too etc etc.

in terms of more reliable, i was refering to the idea that you always here "they didn't come in yet" or "problems w/ our supplier" where if it was all made in house then you don't have to worry about entier parts not coming in, they're already there, you just have to worry about material.

i do realize it's not always practicle to do everything in house, but what do they do in house? do they just assemble and design everything?

[Nobody077]

It is Much cheaper outsource the jobs than to do it in house, The place I work at we have a full machine shop but we now have all our parts made at a machine shop down the street. When you factor in the cost of the machines, repair of machines, workers pay, shop space rental,cost of running the machines it is much cheaper to outsource. The reason that machine shops can make money is that is all they do, and they usaly have many customer contracts being ran at one time. The only way to save money by makeing parts in house is to run parts 24/7 all year, I just dont see this kind of demand for iny type of paintball items

[LaW]

Originally posted by Nobody077
It is Much cheaper outsource the jobs than to do it in house, The place I work at we have a full machine shop but we now have all our parts made at a machine shop down the street. When you factor in the cost of the machines, repair of machines, workers pay, shop space rental,cost of running the machines it is much cheaper to outsource. The reason that machine shops can make money is that is all they do, and they usaly have many customer contracts being ran at one time. The only way to save money by makeing parts in house is to run parts 24/7 all year, I just dont see this kind of demand for iny type of paintball items

Well put, just what I was about to explain. Thank you for saving me the time of typing it myself :)

[MantisMag]

well you need the equipment, the space, you need the personnel to man the machines, the utility costs of running them, the maintenance costs and i'm sure some other costs i'm not thinking of. the bigger and faster the setup the cheaper it is individually but the more it costs initially. so while the guys that agd is outsourcing to can afford to spend the money on the better setup because they have many different jobs agd can not because they're not producing enough product to justify the cost. which in turn raises the price of the individual unit.

[luke]

how do you figure? the companies that make this stuff are making a profit, they have expenses, they have the equipment, and the man power, which AGD is paying for everytime they order a part, plus they have to make up for their own expenses.
Tom would have to pay all of this even if it was done under his own roof.

I am by no means speaking for Tom but, having hired and fired as many people as I have in the past ten years, to run a production shop, is enough to detour me from ever wanting to start up a large company. Good, loyal, hard working employees that show up for work EVERY DAY, ON TIME, is becoming harder and harder. There are people out there with a strong work ethic, but they are harder to find than you think.

[Webmaster]

Jester - its a matter of economics. You either make it all in house - or you farm it out. In AGDs case, the machines to make AIR valves and other mag parts are prohibiativly expensive. Then there is the cost of hiring skilled workers to operate the machines and maintenacne.


You would be surprised, but A LOT of paintball companies dont make thier own stuff. And those that do, pretty much all of them use their machines for more than just paintball. They often make parts for other industries like aerospace - so bring in additional captial to run the machines.