In North America at least, much manufacturing has turned to what they call ‘low volume, high mix’. The story told is that, with large-volume manufacturing having been off-shored, what remains is only low-volume; for manufacturers to survive, they have to adapt to having lots of clients, ordering a variety of small jobs.

Having designed the system that is the heart of the BikeMinder.ca product, it now needs to be manufactured as a consumer product.

This means an enclosure for the electronics, sourcing of wholesale components, assembly, pricing, packing, shipping, stickers, brochures, installation instructions, freight forwarding, customs brokers, postage, returns, customer management, promotion, marketing, advertising, web site, e-commerce tools, and I don’t know what else!

The worst problem, however, was the enclosure. For the past few months, I gave up several times–the most recent was Tuesday!

The hardware and the firmware were electrical/computer engineering; the physical enclosure that is to hold it all is a mechanical, real-world problem that is not at all my forte! I know very little about manufacturing, and knew even less.

Being used to cheap, mass-produced goods, I’d not expected the enclosure to cost much. I’d even hoped to manufacture it locally, here in Canada. But, it turned out that the typical route to design and production of enclosures results in a cost that is several times that of the envisioned retail price for the finished product. (And this has more to do with materials and machinery than it has to do with labour costs.) The quotes range from $70 to $350–and the $70 ignores the $100s initially spent to lower the price!

The situation does not improve if one considers off-shore manufacturing: Those are large-volume factories uninterested in a single guy seeking a production run of 50 (at most 100) units! Simply, they ignore me. The runs they’re interested-in are many 10,000s of items, with an initial set-up cost in the $1000s.

I have no such capital. Furthermore, as the product is yet to be sold, there is no guarantee that there will be paying customers for it: Spending $20,000-$30,000 (or more?) would be madness, even if I did have it!

But, engineers find ways. The solution had to be to use a COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf) enclosure: As low cost is achieved by only mass-production, then the only option was to search, far and wide, for any mass-produced item which could possibly serve as a suitable enclosure.

And the one suitable is ready-made, metallic, cylindrical cans. There are lots of them, and I have managed to short-list a few which may fit. Once the samples arrive, I will test them for fit and function.

Will consumers accept this? Well, it is no different from the question of whether cyclists will accept large sirens mounted onto their bicycles. I believe that they will, because it brings them added peace of mind.