ABSTRACT
Facility renegotiations are always a fecund opportunity for cost savings. We are not always going to see huge cost reductions; however, a horde of small cost reductions can help reduce margins, in a culture of savings, and make for much less risk. We primarily look to Lean approaches to find cost reduction opportunities when releasing material to the floor. Good candidates for a new lease on usefulness are items such as amplifiers, Helmholtz coils, antennae, and other electronic hardware picked up at a fraction of the original cost. As with design testing, we recommend highly accelerated life testing or multienvironmental testing as a means to reduce cost and accelerate the turnaround time. Since we have the right of approval of any changes to the supplied product, we can offer to share the value of any cost reduction achieved by the supplier, thus allowing a win-win scenario. Low bids may represent a cost reduction—they may also represent a major fiasco.
