Case Study / Marine Product
The product worked.
The manufacturing model didn't.
A specialized marine assembly had a viable market, but its manufacturing cost made the existing production approach difficult to sustain or scale.
Before
$2,000+
unit cost
After
$1,000
unit cost
Production
~400 units / year
repeat production scale
The Challenge
The cost was not hiding in one bad quote.
The assembly had accumulated an expensive combination of manufacturing choices, sourcing decisions, and assembly work. Shopping the same architecture harder would not have solved the underlying economics.
PRODUCT
The architecture carried cost
Part design and interfaces influenced which processes were available, how much machining was required, and where complexity appeared downstream.
SUPPLY
The sourcing path carried cost
The existing make/buy structure and supplier routing were not aligned with the product's repeat volume or the economics the market required.
ASSEMBLY
The process carried cost
Too much recurring effort remained in fabrication, setup, fitting, assembly, and manufacturing interpretation.
The Diagnosis
Redesign the manufacturing path, not just the part.
The opportunity was in the interaction between design, manufacturing, sourcing, and assembly. Telodyn treated those as one system and rebuilt the path from product definition to finished hardware.
01 / DESIGN
Simplify the product around manufacturable interfaces and realistic process capability.
02 / PROCESS
Match manufacturing methods to the actual quantity, geometry, and cost target.
03 / SUPPLY
Develop a sourcing model that separates process specialties rather than paying one path to absorb everything.
04 / CONTROL
Define the product and manufacturing requirements clearly enough for repeat production.
What Changed
Cost reduction became a product-realization project.
The solution combined engineering and manufacturing work rather than isolating the problem inside purchasing or CAD.
Product redesign
DFM & tolerance strategy
Manufacturing process selection
Supplier development
Assembly simplification
Production documentation
GD&T / product definition
Repeatable supply chain
The Result
Better economics—and a manufacturing system behind them.
The unit-cost reduction mattered. The more durable result was that the company no longer had to solve the same manufacturing problem on every build.
Unit Cost
$2,000+
$1,000
Ongoing Production
~400 / year
Repeat production at meaningful low volume, supported by a defined manufacturing and supplier system rather than one-off fabrication.
Why This Case Matters
The expensive part is not always the problem.
The case matters because no single discipline owned the answer. The economics improved only after the product and its manufacturing path were treated as one problem.
The question was not “how do we buy this cheaper?” It was “what would this product look like if the manufacturing system had been designed with it from the beginning?”
Related Problems
This case sits at the intersection of several Telodyn problems.
Bring Us the Hard Part
What should be working better?
Tell us what you are building, what is getting in the way, and what you have already tried. You do not need to know whether the problem belongs to design, manufacturing, sourcing, or all three.