We’re Big in Small!
Like any good company seeking growth, RBB looked for customers, found them, made them reasonably happy, and enticed them to place another order. While doing so, we looked for other customers to build on this foundation. In the process, and over many years, RBB best attracted customers whose needs more or less loosely fit a certain profile. Their control panels and/or electronic assemblies…- Have to work every time (mission critical applications)
- Are often technically challenging
- Are spread out in a wide variety of products
- Are in a constant state of revision
- Involve a high percentage of custom components
- Frequently have either small or unpredictable demand (often both) with occasional un-forecasted needs
Operations set about satisfying these new needs in addition to the hundreds of other smaller orders and found it extremely difficult. Large runs of relatively stable designs were simply incompatible with the constant barrage of small, challenging jobs. Eventually, the large volume work would find a home with a competing CM, usually based on price. And the pattern would repeat itself when another “big opportunity” came our way.
It started to dawn on us that not only was the large volume tempting and hard to keep over the long term, but they were also a distraction operationally. Customers that RBB had long served often suffered when these huge pieces of business got in the way. An agile, flexible, ever-changing production schedule ceases to function properly when that same system and equipment is expected to produce batches of several thousand units at a time.
Concurrently, it was also becoming clearer that the need for a world class Job Shop was emerging. More and more high technology companies had a myriad of products that would never reach “respectable” volumes as judged by traditional CM’s. These companies needed a partner who could help them grow their business on new products, supplement their lower volume standard products, and support their legacy systems as well.
These observations eventually coalesced into RBB’s strategic decision to abandon its pursuit of large volume work and dedicate ourselves to satisfying the significant and perpetual unmet need for superior small batch (Job Shop) services. The key to this cleaner and more successful business model is being superbly efficient (cost conscious without compromising service) in the small batch world. This philosophy allows RBB to lead the way like no other CM can.
The market response to RBB’s small batch focus has been an immediate and audible “Finally! Thank you!” Large and small OEM’s, high tech startups, and even CM’s looking to move unprofitable work off their high speed lines have recognized they have been merely accepting substandard service and margins on small batches. Until now.
Today, RBB’s Job Shop runs no production batch larger than 500 units and even this is the rare exception:
- 90% of our jobs are for less than 100 units,
- 80% are for less than 50,
- 65% are for less than 25.
