[Jewelry making - Article 00033] - Re: [Orchid] 3Design Jewel

[Neil George]

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>         It's Doctor Denayer, btw. 

    Dr. Denayer, I had a feeling I was dealing with an intellectual,
    funny how I sense these things ahead of time :-) 

>          You are certainly entitled to your opinion. Well thank you. I
>     know it's often a problem. 

    Not at all. As along as we can debate this without anyone's feelings
    getting hurt, then all is well. I am very direct in my writing, and
    it does not truly reflect my true personality, never are my responses
    meant to offend, but the fact that my explanations can leave me wide
    open for speculation. The intent is always to get a point across that
    may, or may not benefit others. 

>     What is the time needed to make a ring with 3 prong settings in this
>     program for someone who has never done this? Let's say that we
>     talking here about two persons with a 20 % higher IQ than average,
>     the first has no experience with 3D whatsoever, and the second
>     knows how to handle Rhino. What is your estimate? And about the
>     costs. What will the final cost be for these individuals to have
>     the wax model (or whatever) in their hands, so that the final
>     product can be made, from the beginning to the end of the line?
>     Well? 

    I believe that before we discuss this further, it would be fair for
    you, to at least look at the sample videos I offered, so that you may
    better understand where I am coming from, and we can discuss this
    more on a level of mutual comprehension. 

>         No, you don't. You are referring to an outdated model of
>     information. It's impossible to seperate facts from values. Your
>     information will always be biased in some sense. There is no
>     objectivity. 

    When I say back it up with actions, I mean real life actions. You
    and I debating back and forth will never bring us into line and agree
    with one another. Therefore my actions are reflected in the fact that
    at any time a potential customer would like to see this in operation,
    and I mean design the piece and take it through manufacturing, then
    that's how I prove my points by showing you. Talk is cheap I know, but
    you can rest assured, that I only validate solutions that I know
    work, and are testament to the fact that they are being used here at
    my facility daily. 

>     but you are obviously not a jeweler and certainly not a small scale 
jeweler,
>     i.e. the type I admire the most in this trade, the man or woman who
>     tries to make everything or most of what s/he sells her/himself,
>     the sort of artisan if you want, or perhaps even artist if s/he is
>     really good at what s/he does. 

    You are way of base there Will. I have 31 years at the bench and in
    fact started at the age of 11 in my fathers retail and custom
    jewellery business. Therefore, I fully comprehend the total
    manufacturing solution and the retail realities. 

>     Quite  frankly, and I do not mean this as an insult at all, I
>     think that you are completely off reality here if you assume that
>     (most?) people like this have the means (financial and timewise) to
>     make this kind of investment. It's simple isn't feasible for many,
>     since many jewelers work under constant pressure already: pieces
>     have to be made and sold or the liquid stuff will be on the table (
>     a crime against humanity). 

    Will, no insult taken, but at the end of the day ***we all*** work
    hard. I put in on average 16 hours a day, and mostly seven days a
    week. I know all about pressure and maybe more so than jewellers, and
    I speak from first hand knowledge. The Aerospace Industry is as
    grueling as it gets. Yes I make a tremendous amount of money doing
    it, but if I make a mistake and for any reason, missed the delivery
    date, even worse with a plane sitting on the tarmac at $40,000 per
    day, well you can take it to the bank that they would come looking
    for compensation. Yes in jewellery, you have similar commitments that
    have delivery dates with consequences if they are missed and I
    acknowledge that, therefore my problem is doubled by that mere fact
    alone. I never assume what others have in their pockets, and I
    certainly do not look down at anyone that do not have the means to
    move like I may have, in fact I try to help them. Give a man a fish,
    he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat
    everyday.....something like that anyway. I put in the hours because I
    want to retire early, and not keep working until I am too old to
    enjoy it , so do not read into the fact that there may be something
    wrong with the amount of hours I work. The information I provide
    should not be misinterpreted as me saying, you are foolish if you
    don't do what I say, the information is meant to enlighten the
    individuals, that there are solutions being worked on, and that
    solutions are available to possible make it easier on them. Whether
    they can pull it off, or even if they never enter the CAD market,
    they are still entitled to know what is out there. I am not in the
    business of telling people how to run their business, but if any
    single one of them needed help, in finding creative solutions or
    answers as to how they *may* actually be able to enter, then I
    sincerely and openly offer them my assistance. I have told many, that
    I do not care about making money off of them, but more importantly I
    will offer them advice to the best of my ability to make the right
    choices for them. It is not about the money for me. Yes I like to
    make money otherwise I would not be in business, but I prefer to make
    money from those who can easily afford my rates, and most certainly
    not from anyone dealing with a weak poker hand. 


>          The information I provided was intended for you not to have
>     to rely on a liquid lunch. The whole intention was for you to
>     receive information that may, or may not benefit you, and actually
>     allow you to eat a solid meal. Productivity in my opinion equates
>     to more time off not less. If you are more productive in less time
>     by utilizing smart solutions then for me that's the bottom line.
>     Well, this can be answered easily. Browsing through literature
>     after my solid meal, most if not all serious sociologists of labor
>     etc. hold (and have proven) that, since the seventies, the working
>     population in the first world (the most industrialized countries)
>     have been working more, not less, while this has not been making
>     life more easy. 

    These, or their offspring's are probably the ones that recommended
    we create situations such as Nafta, other trade free zone alliances
    and unbalanced tariffs on import and export duties. A friend of mine
    quoted on a job for an extremely complicated metal mold. his bid  was
    $23,000 with an 8 week lead time. Comes back as a no way Jose',
    because a company in China had bid $11,350 with a 3 week lead time.
    For the same money they put more people on the job which reduced the
    lead time, but the biggest factor was, they were delivering the tool
    at $3,500 less than the material was costing him here in the US. Now
    if the duties would have balanced the playing field, well he may have
    had a shot. Therefore, they are correct in their studies, but do they
    offer a solution for me or him on how to compete with China other
    than dropping our pants or finding solutions or niche markets.
    Further I might add, the quality of the tooling would not have been
    close to what he would have made, but it didn't really matter. Lead
    time and cost prevailed over quality. My point is, I do not need to
    read studies by so called experts telling me what I already know. If
    the experts were that good, they would have predicted the predicament
    we are in today. Therefore the situation did not allow him to compete
    or get paid what he deserved, it actually meant that he was either
    getting sucked down to their pricing, or not get the job at all. You
    know the answer to that one. This was the point I was making to
    Karen, in that it is not whether the low skilled can get up to the
    respected skill levels, but whether those with skills get pulled down
    to the lower level. This will tell you why, tool and die makers, mold
    makers and general machine shops in the US are not making what they
    should as an annual salary and why the industry is struggling on the
    whole. I have many friends in this field and I hear them complaining
    about it daily. 

>         On the contrary. It's easy to refer to a parameter such as the
>     GNP of a country, but this is a falsification because it tells you
>     nothing except the productivity itself and only in a very limited
>     and fundamentally unreal way. There are other parameters such as
>     the human development index. Fundamentally, the relationship
>     between rising productivity and more satisfaction in life is *far*
>     more complex that you suggest. 

    The data provided in these reports mean little to me at the end of
    the day. It does not tell me where I am heading, or even what I need
    to do to stay competitive, it only enforces the fact that there are
    issues that need to be addressed, and that they do not tell me how to
    address them. The Auto Industry was a classic example. Japan
    utilizing new technology and just in time manufacturing processes in
    the form of Kanban really rocked the US auto Industry. Granted in the
    early days, the quality was poor, but the price was right, and as
    time went by, the quality improved and the product dominated the
    market. It took a long time for Detroit to catch up, and the only way
    they did this was to implement smart solutions, lower the costs of
    manufacturing and thus resulting in a lower priced vehicle that could
    compete on the showroom floor. This meant that the skilled US auto
    workers where now making a product that was competing with the price
    points *set* by the Japanese Auto Makers and not the other way
    around. Same thing with the influx of jewellery from China. Again,
    thin walls, stones falling out, very poor quality, but it sold to the
    masses. The jewellers that were in the mass merchandising of products
    where now not looking to maintain their original price points, they
    were looking to see how they could lower the cost of manufacturing
    with the concept of getting closer to the price set by the Chinese
    jeweller but with better quality, hoping it would be enough to make
    the sale. In a nutshell, a product with reasonable pricing but with
    less problems for the retail jeweller. I am talking first hand here,
    because this was my core business in assisting those companies in the
    automation of their facilities. I offered many solutions to the
    extremely fine Jewellery Houses also, so you can take it that the
    issues where across the board. They could not do this in traditional
    manners, they had to automate their processes. Therefore,
    productivity is not only a question of how many pieces you can
    produce, but what can you produce it for. Yes you can produce
    millions of an item, but if it is not competitive and has the ability
    to sell....well what more can I say. Many view productivity as volume,
    I look at it from another direction. Productivity to me, means having
    the ability to manufacture a single item in less time, therefore
    freeing up more time. Getting the costs down on a single piece, will
    most definitely results in higher profits once in production. 

>         This technology is not within the reach of the people I spoke
>     about and I think you know it too, but that you don't care about
>     it. 

    That's the problem, I do care. One member on the list who uses Gem
    Vision, asked what he should do to move forward. I told him, seeing
    as his staff was trained and knowledgeable in Gem Vision, it made
    more sense for him to go with Matrix and keep everything native.
    That's what he did. Therefore you may deduct, I offered him my
    opinion taking into consideration what was good for him and his
    business. If it was about me making money, I would have sold him
    something else that I would have made money on. That's all I have to
    say on that one. 

>         This technology is meant to be used by manufacturers which
>     produce many pieces, simply, because it is designed for it. So, if
>     we see 50,000 of exactly the same rings on the market next year,
>     perhaps they were made with this program. Yes, productivity
>     increased. 

    Not the case at all. It is geared towards the Artisan and the
    manufacturer alike. It is for a better sense of the word geared
    towards the custom jeweller who needs the tools to produce faster.
    Your point of no one has the time because they are all under the gun,
    only enforces the fact that they really do need more intuitive tools
    to get the job done. Therefore your contradiction is noted. It is
    therefore geared to produce one piece efficiently. The fact that you
    produce 50,000 pieces from that single efficiently made model, well
    isn't that the point. 

Best Regards.
Neil George
954-572-5829



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