Switch Theme:

Supply Side Economics of Injection Molding: The "Why" For So Much of What GW Does That Confuses You  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in us
Daemonic Dreadnought





Eye of Terror

 Argive wrote:
None of that explains why GW will do a limited run plastic injected sprue of Space Marine liuetenants 1# through to #37465 but cannot design and run a sprue for a needed character for faction x (just like one or two)

Its simply not cost effective to do this.


Well, this is a supply side thread. The issue you are talking about is probably a demand side issue.

Lieutenants can be used universally, they're almost a commodity. Characters specific to a faction are niche, meaning they don't appeal to a large number of buyers.

GW's production is tooled for commodity miniatures, not niche miniatures. Fulfilling every niche means they need to measure consumer interest beforehand, to know what will generate revenue and how it compares with, say, a box of Intercessors. I imagine they either lack detailed metrics for every character or have them and the upside doesn't compete with other mass releases.

GW would need a different production strategy to fulfill niche models.

   
Made in gb
Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

 techsoldaten wrote:
GW would need a different production strategy to fulfill niche models.
Which for a long time was resin, like Eisenhorn & Severina Raine.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






GW probably subscribes to LEAN and Just In Time manufacturing mindsets.

In LEAN inventory is counted as waste so the goal is to have components/products moves in and out at as close to a 1:1 rate as possible. To cut down on the overhead cost associated with storage.

I work in pharmaceutical manufacturing and there is only MAYBE a three week supply of any given medication in the supply chain at once.

Years ago GW figured out that something like 70%+ of the total sales of a kit were generated in the first month of release. They've moved their whole business model towards maximizing that initial release sales influx. And in terms of profitability, it's working.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Apocryphally they had a problem with over-production of non-english Specialist games and such back in the day.
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

GW announced long time ago that they were able to save on money and produce small numbers of kits, like for heroes, by using aluminium instead of steel moulds
won't last as long but are many times cheaper to produce

so for a Special Limited Space Marine, they go cheap and if it is gone, its gone and no one cares

for a regular character that need to last the whole lifetime of the army, steel is needed and wihtout saving costs on something else (like put it on the same mould like other stuff) not worth doing it

Shooter wrote:I think the idea they don't want to sell more Howling Banshees and make £££ in profit because they might have to chuck a few pennies of plastic in the bin is a bit of stretch. Is there any evidence the triple-half sprues even get made with anything else? Do they have to stick a half sprue character model on for every unit of outriders they want to make?
It's just a standard price for a unit kit that GW thinks you are only gonna buy 1 or 2 of, isn't it?

the expensive part is warehouse space and GW tries too keep the demand of boxes balanced for not needing too much expensive space but also not having too less to get bad PR of running out of models

for the same reason GW is not very interested to get the wargaming market growing faster and larger than they could fulfill the demand
the prices help to keep the market at the size GW wants it to be, if it shrinks too much a new game for cheap is coming up, if it grows too much the prices for that game make a step up

Blackie wrote:
I honestly don't get the "Third party retailers dont actually choose what they get to stock from Games Workshop" statement.

because they don't, there is a limited amount of what the store can stock as item, and depending on how much of the "standard" stock you take each month you can get items from the extended stock

everything else the store does not buy as retailer but customer from GW with the intention that if you get don't get everything from them you won't be the other stuff as well (because of you need to go to GW for 1 item you are likley to order the others there too)


Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in us
Daemonic Dreadnought





Eye of Terror

beast_gts wrote:
 techsoldaten wrote:
GW would need a different production strategy to fulfill niche models.
Which for a long time was resin, like Eisenhorn & Severina Raine.

Ah, Forgeworld. If only they could scale to become more affordable.

This kind of proves the point that it's a demand side issue. Demand will only scale as much as prices allow.

 kodos wrote:
Shooter wrote:I think the idea they don't want to sell more Howling Banshees and make £££ in profit because they might have to chuck a few pennies of plastic in the bin is a bit of stretch. Is there any evidence the triple-half sprues even get made with anything else? Do they have to stick a half sprue character model on for every unit of outriders they want to make?
It's just a standard price for a unit kit that GW thinks you are only gonna buy 1 or 2 of, isn't it?

the expensive part is warehouse space and GW tries too keep the demand of boxes balanced for not needing too much expensive space but also not having too less to get bad PR of running out of models

for the same reason GW is not very interested to get the wargaming market growing faster and larger than they could fulfill the demand
the prices help to keep the market at the size GW wants it to be, if it shrinks too much a new game for cheap is coming up, if it grows too much the prices for that game make a step up


Which is why boxed sets so commonly feature old / unpopular models. Gets them off the (expensive) storage shelves.

It's difficult for people to get their heads around the idea that pricing is simply a matter of controlling the size of the market. If GW were to cut prices to better reflect the actual cost of production, they would be out of business in a couple years. Not because of profit, but because of attainability.

In MTG, cards have different levels of rarity. This drives sales, people buy packs that contain nothing they want, hoping to get something they would really like to have. GW does something similar, prices enforce the system by making some models much more desirable but less attainable.

GW's model is superior, however. By not making characters for niche factions, those models become absolutely desirable and utterly unattainable. Remissness - the act of not doing something that is expected - is the perfect answer to niche demand that cannot be fulfilled.

   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

kenofyork wrote:


If Chevy offered a direct ordering system at a 20% off, many dealerships would be gone in short order.



By law in most of the US automobile manufacturers cannot sell directly to customers and new cars may only be sold only by licensed, bonded, independently owned dealerships. Thats why Tesla does not operate dealership and instead operates "galleries" where you can look at the car but depending on the state cannot discussing pricing, purchase terms, financing, etc. and need to place your order online (in some states you can make that purchase at a computer kiosk in the store, in others you cannot). The reason these laws exist in just about every state is basically because of the exact scenario you just described.

GW probably subscribes to LEAN and Just In Time manufacturing mindsets.


I know for a fact that GWs manufacturing engineers do.

GW announced long time ago that they were able to save on money and produce small numbers of kits, like for heroes, by using aluminium instead of steel moulds
won't last as long but are many times cheaper to produce


Even aluminum molds will probably still last probably about a decade for a lot of kits. Aluminum tooling is usually rated for 50k-200k shots depending on the part design, alloy quality, finishing, etc. Really high end aluminum molds (using 7000 series alloy) can be rated for over 2 million shots (though at that point I question if using 7000 series aluminum would actually save you much/anything vs using a lower grade steel). IIRC there were only somewhere between 100-200k copies of Indomitus produced - i.e. one of GWs most in-demand products could have conceivably been produced using aluminum molds instead of steel (unless there were duplicate sprues in the box, but you get the point). A lot of kits simply don't sell that many copies, I wouldn't be surprised if only a few ten-thousands of copies of some of them are produced across the kits entire lifetime. This is especially true once you get into units which players/collectors are unlikey to buy more than 1 copy of, especially in those factions which aren't very popular to begin with.
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 GoldenHorde wrote:
 insaniak wrote:
A good analysis overall, although I would disagree with this bit:
 the_scotsman wrote:

-GW's full MSRP is just another way to control demand. In the case of Howling Banshees in particular, if you had me guess, I'd say that for every howling banshee kit that games workshop produces, they must ALSO produce 1x Jain Zar kit. In order to keep jain zar's from piling up in stock, Howling Banshees are priced artificially high (and included in as many bundles together as they can get away with) so that people dont buy Howling Banshees and Jain at like a 4:1 purchase ratio.


If the problem with selling Howling Banshees is that they wind up with a backlog of Jain Zars, the best solution for the bottom line would likely be to keep producing as many as they can sell and bin the excess Jain Zar sprues (or throw them in the grinder for the plastic to be re-used, if they're doing that yet). So long as the other half of the tool is selling, the cost of those 'wasted' frames is negligible.

Traditionally, GW's prices have tended to be based more on how many of a given kit they are likely to sell within that army. So character models and elite units that people don't need as many of tend to be more expensive to counteract the fact that people won't buy as many of them.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 GoldenHorde wrote:

As if GW can't hire or even purchase its own aux generators.

It's not just generators that they would need though. They would need more machines for those generators to run, and then more space in the factory for those machines and generators to sit in.


Where boxed sets and terrain are concerned, a lot of this product is also produced externally, so they're going to be somewhat at the mercy of the production queue of whatever third party they are using. It's not always as simple as throwing more money at the problem.


It's upto GW to sort out their production.
If they are too lazy to figure what to do to solve the production impasse, well then thats on them.

To say oh well ,they do FOMO because of a power grid is just ridiculous and pathetic.


...Except that they DO do FOMO because of the limitations of the power grid.... it being ridiculous and pathetic has really nothing to do with the fact that it is basically true. The whole point of the large packaged boxes is because it allows them to basically guarantee that everything they print off from all of their machines all will sell together, but producing one of those boxes requires the use of basically all their machines (or at least, the majority such that they cannot run two large boxes at once.)

It is a fact that at present they appear to be choosing to always produce the next big box rather than trying to go back and produce more of an existing box. Heck, even the starter box of the game at this point is a limited run. You cant go buy Indomitus.

I said at the top of the thread this is not an "Excuse" thread as I do not think any of these business practices are GOOD, I'm just here pointing out that they ARE and that there is more to "why" than just greed. Obviously there is greed. It's just not ALL greed, lol.

Feel free to talk about your experiences working within the industrial injection molding industry though, I am all ears.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Isn't part of this entire thesis predicated on the notion that GW can't print lots of Banshees because they'll end up with a surplus of Jain Zarr minis?

How do we know that's accurate?


Yeah, that was a guess. We know that the reason GW waited so long on plastic characters (the Finecrap debacle) was because theyd sell at such low volume that both the prices would have to be absurd and theyd require so much machine downtime to produce - hi, 35$-40$ characters - so GW bundles however and wherever it can.

They experimented with a few different methods - bundling them together, ala broodcoven and exalted sorcerors, or triumvirate boxes, or just extremely highly priced individual kits like the SM characters. Now, mysteriously, characters always seem to come out with bundle kits and often wind up in Start Collecting/Combat Patrol starters grouped up with troops and other units.

Just a guess, not something I know for sure. But definitely something I could see them trying, given how massively bad a deal plastic character sculpts is for them sales volume wise.

Almost as bad as plastic kits for every aspect warrior squad and pheonix lord lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
beast_gts wrote:
 techsoldaten wrote:
GW would need a different production strategy to fulfill niche models.
Which for a long time was resin, like Eisenhorn & Severina Raine.


Yeah that worked out awesome for them pr-wise.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/11/30 15:48:07


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in ca
Fresh-Faced New User




 the_scotsman wrote:

3) GW doesnt do discounts or sales direct - but I can buy stuff from third party retailers for a discount? What gives? Why would gw do this?

-A third party retailer is a captive audience. Fun fact: Third party retailers dont actually choose what they get to stock from Games Workshop. They have a set list of kits that they get as part of their package, which corresponds to the amount of space in their shop they set aside for Games Workshop products. They can request to replace a kit if they sell one, but in order to get something from the catalog, they get a much, much lower seller's discount on that item. It's actually way more profitable for Games Workshop to be able to sell 10000x of one kit for 40% less than MSRP than it is to sell 10,000 random kits for full MSRP, because of the machine downtime.



This is a really good post. Hopefully it helps 'reset' some GW realities. A question on point 3:

Is this the case that retailer have a minimum/mandatory buy? Is it some kind of tier system where class c stores have to buy 2x of every release, class b stores 10x of every release, class a stores 30x... etc.

That kind of thing? I know for music stores some emanufactures have mandatory inventory buys.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

Tome_Keeper wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:

3) GW doesnt do discounts or sales direct - but I can buy stuff from third party retailers for a discount? What gives? Why would gw do this?

-A third party retailer is a captive audience. Fun fact: Third party retailers dont actually choose what they get to stock from Games Workshop. They have a set list of kits that they get as part of their package, which corresponds to the amount of space in their shop they set aside for Games Workshop products. They can request to replace a kit if they sell one, but in order to get something from the catalog, they get a much, much lower seller's discount on that item. It's actually way more profitable for Games Workshop to be able to sell 10000x of one kit for 40% less than MSRP than it is to sell 10,000 random kits for full MSRP, because of the machine downtime.



This is a really good post. Hopefully it helps 'reset' some GW realities. A question on point 3:

Is this the case that retailer have a minimum/mandatory buy? Is it some kind of tier system where class c stores have to buy 2x of every release, class b stores 10x of every release, class a stores 30x... etc.

That kind of thing? I know for music stores some emanufactures have mandatory inventory buys.


Here in the USA the answer is YES.
Couldn't tell you what exactly it is, but I've heard all three local shops refer to it at various times.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Maybe they'll take a lead from Hasbro and create their own in-house crowdfunding site.
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

they have already done this with the "made to order" stuff

Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






Tome_Keeper wrote:
 the_scotsman wrote:

3) GW doesnt do discounts or sales direct - but I can buy stuff from third party retailers for a discount? What gives? Why would gw do this?

-A third party retailer is a captive audience. Fun fact: Third party retailers dont actually choose what they get to stock from Games Workshop. They have a set list of kits that they get as part of their package, which corresponds to the amount of space in their shop they set aside for Games Workshop products. They can request to replace a kit if they sell one, but in order to get something from the catalog, they get a much, much lower seller's discount on that item. It's actually way more profitable for Games Workshop to be able to sell 10000x of one kit for 40% less than MSRP than it is to sell 10,000 random kits for full MSRP, because of the machine downtime.



This is a really good post. Hopefully it helps 'reset' some GW realities. A question on point 3:

Is this the case that retailer have a minimum/mandatory buy? Is it some kind of tier system where class c stores have to buy 2x of every release, class b stores 10x of every release, class a stores 30x... etc.

That kind of thing? I know for music stores some emanufactures have mandatory inventory buys.


That is definitely how it works in the US. Youve got a stock level that has an amount of buy-in in order to get the retail discount, and you stock whatever GW sends you to sell at whatever price you want. The amount of kits you sell allows you to kind of 'rank up' and gw will send you a wider variety of different stuff.

The shop I live near just started selling warhammer, and the stock gw sent them was:

-about a dozen paints with a rack
-a tau SC box and a Seraphon SC box
-3x each of the LE catachan colonel and AOS...something, the limited guy
-a sentinel
-a devastator squad
-an intercessor squad
-gretchins
-ork boyz
-tau strike team
-sisters of battle
-chaos space marines
-stormcast eternals
-a named character for the nighthaunts
-eldar wraiths

Seemed like a mix of 'stuff thats a good starting point' and 'crap we had in the warehouse.'

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/30 20:17:00


"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

 the_scotsman wrote:

Almost as bad as plastic kits for every aspect warrior squad and pheonix lord lol.

Before they moved away from the multipart model in favour of monopose sculpts, it wouldn't have taken much to consolidate the Aspects into two or three plastic kits with swappable parts to build a couple of the Aspects from each, and it surprised me that they went with the really, really boring Dire Avenger kit as a standalone instead.

 
   
Made in au
Owns Whole Set of Skullz Techpriests






Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

They should have done plastic Aspect Warriors as three kits right from the start (and by that I mean after the Avengers were completed in plastic).

The 'Light' Aspects - so Banshees and Hawks as one kit. They're the more acrobatic ones, so their general posing would have worked together.

The 'Medium' Aspects - Scorps and Dragons. They have heavier armour than the other two, and Dragons could use a bit more imaginative posing - almost all Dragon minis have looked the same over the years - and that could be supplied with the more agile Scorp posing. A nice mix of the two.

The 'Heavy' Aspects - Reapers and Spiders. Give them both some real bulk.

It's mostly head and arm swaps, with some backpack shenanigans for Hawks and Spiders. Would'a been great, and probably not that difficult given the things they've done with multi-unit kits.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/01 01:17:33


Industrial Insanity - My Terrain Blog
"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought




San Jose, CA

chaos0xomega wrote:
Spoiler:
kenofyork wrote:


If Chevy offered a direct ordering system at a 20% off, many dealerships would be gone in short order.



By law in most of the US automobile manufacturers cannot sell directly to customers and new cars may only be sold only by licensed, bonded, independently owned dealerships. Thats why Tesla does not operate dealership and instead operates "galleries" where you can look at the car but depending on the state cannot discussing pricing, purchase terms, financing, etc. and need to place your order online (in some states you can make that purchase at a computer kiosk in the store, in others you cannot). The reason these laws exist in just about every state is basically because of the exact scenario you just described.

GW probably subscribes to LEAN and Just In Time manufacturing mindsets.


I know for a fact that GWs manufacturing engineers do.

GW announced long time ago that they were able to save on money and produce small numbers of kits, like for heroes, by using aluminium instead of steel moulds
won't last as long but are many times cheaper to produce


Even aluminum molds will probably still last probably about a decade for a lot of kits. Aluminum tooling is usually rated for 50k-200k shots depending on the part design, alloy quality, finishing, etc. Really high end aluminum molds (using 7000 series alloy) can be rated for over 2 million shots (though at that point I question if using 7000 series aluminum would actually save you much/anything vs using a lower grade steel). IIRC there were only somewhere between 100-200k copies of Indomitus produced - i.e. one of GWs most in-demand products could have conceivably been produced using aluminum molds instead of steel (unless there were duplicate sprues in the box, but you get the point). A lot of kits simply don't sell that many copies, I wouldn't be surprised if only a few ten-thousands of copies of some of them are produced across the kits entire lifetime. This is especially true once you get into units which players/collectors are unlikey to buy more than 1 copy of, especially in those factions which aren't very popular to begin with.


I agree, one would assume GW must have a pretty advanced toolroom (can't touch Bandai & Tamiya tho). If they have the various machinery (laser etching, EDM & wire-cut EDM, etc) that make cutting the mold into tool steel easy and "affordable", everything but the limited time stuff should be in steel.
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader





 Nurglitch wrote:
I would suggest that #1 is due to the fact that supporting the game is a cost-generating activity, rather than a revenue-generating activity like sculpting great display pieces. I'd guess that the number of people who actually play Warhammer, as opposed to collecting and painting, is a minority, and something of an afterthought.


I've become friends with a couple different GW retail managers over the last 10 years. Out of curiosity I asked them how many of their customers just paint/read books and don't play the game. They all put the number around 5%. I don't think it's anywhere near 50%. The vast majority of people buying these models are buying them to play the game. Hell half the people in my area don't even paint their stuff. The FLGS doesn't require painted armies in their tournaments because they would lose 3/4 of the playerbase.
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 kodos wrote:


Blackie wrote:
I honestly don't get the "Third party retailers dont actually choose what they get to stock from Games Workshop" statement.

because they don't, there is a limited amount of what the store can stock as item, and depending on how much of the "standard" stock you take each month you can get items from the extended stock

everything else the store does not buy as retailer but customer from GW with the intention that if you get don't get everything from them you won't be the other stuff as well (because of you need to go to GW for 1 item you are likley to order the others there too)



Well, I get my models from 2 online stores since a decade now, both with a 25% on the entire GW catalogue or 10% on the exclusives, and they always have everything. In the rare case something is not in stock (and we're talking about cases in which someone orders lots of copies of the same kit at once) they order it, still comes with the 25% discount.

 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





 Toofast wrote:
 Nurglitch wrote:
I would suggest that #1 is due to the fact that supporting the game is a cost-generating activity, rather than a revenue-generating activity like sculpting great display pieces. I'd guess that the number of people who actually play Warhammer, as opposed to collecting and painting, is a minority, and something of an afterthought.


I've become friends with a couple different GW retail managers over the last 10 years. Out of curiosity I asked them how many of their customers just paint/read books and don't play the game. They all put the number around 5%. I don't think it's anywhere near 50%. The vast majority of people buying these models are buying them to play the game. Hell half the people in my area don't even paint their stuff. The FLGS doesn't require painted armies in their tournaments because they would lose 3/4 of the playerbase.

That's what we call 'confirmation bias.' The only reason to go to a GW store is to play the game, so of course the guys manning the stores are going to meet players rather than people who are exclusively painters and modelers.
   
Made in us
Swift Swooping Hawk





 Nurglitch wrote:
 Toofast wrote:
 Nurglitch wrote:
I would suggest that #1 is due to the fact that supporting the game is a cost-generating activity, rather than a revenue-generating activity like sculpting great display pieces. I'd guess that the number of people who actually play Warhammer, as opposed to collecting and painting, is a minority, and something of an afterthought.


I've become friends with a couple different GW retail managers over the last 10 years. Out of curiosity I asked them how many of their customers just paint/read books and don't play the game. They all put the number around 5%. I don't think it's anywhere near 50%. The vast majority of people buying these models are buying them to play the game. Hell half the people in my area don't even paint their stuff. The FLGS doesn't require painted armies in their tournaments because they would lose 3/4 of the playerbase.

That's what we call 'confirmation bias.' The only reason to go to a GW store is to play the game, so of course the guys manning the stores are going to meet players rather than people who are exclusively painters and modelers.


In my anecdotal experience, the local GW has *more* of the exclusive paint/modeling crowd than the FLGSes. Maybe in part because my local GW guy gives a free painting tutorial to new hobbyists. In any case, if you think an FLGS/GW owner's view on this is skewed, who would you trust? That seems like the best source to me (well, an aggregation of multiple GW/FLGS managers), far better than something like a GW survey.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Doesn't GW release an annual statement, including information on their direct and indirect channels of sales?
   
Made in gb
Highlord with a Blackstone Fortress






Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

I like this thread a lot, and gave my Exalt to the OP.

However lower power is not the limiting factor, that is an excuse. GW may well have been told that the grid is operating at max capacity but that is just UK infrastructure bs talk. There is always room for more in manufacturing, if there isn't a trip to Whitehall would sort that out quickly.

However GW doesn't have much clout in Whitehall, far less than the companies size would attest to, they are still regarded as a joke by many civil servants, and worse by others.


Now GW does also manufacture on a smaller scale in the US. This need not be the case and certainly would not be the case if the limiting factor was power consumption.

However all that aside the real restriction comes from two main sources.

First the bloated stock line that GW has. Far far in excess of pretty much any other manufacturer in the same field. What about Airfix you might say? Yes Airfix likely has more tools than GW in its catalogue, and has stuff going back to the 60s, but there is no need for Airfix to produce any particular kit and they retool slowly. If the 1/24 scale Stuka isn't ready for another decade who cares, they retooled the 1./24 Hurricane and Spitfire and worked on the Me109. If on the other hand GW runs out of Rhinos, or Leman Russes that is a major hole in the range of the respective armies.
Consequently GW cannot go out of stock of any particular item unless the entire faction takes a step out of the limelight.

The second restriction is that molding machines are very expensive, there is an enormous outlay for them. GW made a fairly longsighted investment plan about twenty years ago and retooled with and advanced range of machines. This retooling is complete and GW can make good on the assets it has.
Adding more machines would add overheads in more than just electricity, staffing warehousing logistics etc would all need to increase.

This is not a problem because modern tooling for polymers is far more advanced than it was when GW first made plastics. Plastic tools can be produced easily through CAD, and at far less cost than even a decade ago. Even small companies can achieve a lot when they invest in modern plastics tooling. Take a look at Renedra and Archon Studio as examples.
Games Workshop is long on talent in sculpting digisculpting and all aspects of tooling. The company cannot be faulted on those grounds.

It all comes back to the stock catalogue and business model. Games Workshop requires as an inheritance of its own marketing plan to be able to fully support a vast range of factions simultaneously.

Thus they have focused on a strategy of limiting active production to a relative handful of permanent lines plus seasonal items and limited edition runs.

Even so changing tooling is not expensive or a true limiter on production speed. Swapping a machine from Space Marines to Sigmarines is a matter of a couple of minutes plus a test press. The problem here is that logistics has to catch up. When a machine is on its will churn out vast numbers of the tool presented to it. This then needs to be packaged warehoused and then distributed. GW large though it is simply cannot afford the logistics of holding all its lines concurrently even though the modern presses can swap tools on the fly and product a large number of items at the same time.

A company that works for outsource like Renedra doesn't have this problem, They produce what their client wants and had paid for. Archon Studio doesn't have this problem, even though they are making multiple sprues or stretchgoal components and handing them out like candy with every backer's reward. Yes they are producing a 'lot' of sprues from a user perspective, we back for two or three and get ten. but from their end so long as they can digisculpt the models and then construct the tool they can have as many active tools as they want. All their tools put together do not match the number of tools for even one of GW's more modest model ranges.
Airfix, Tamiya and Revell do not have this problem as they can pick and choose what models go in stock without effecting their business model.

GW's problems are pretty much unique, their catalogue and potential catalogue is vast, they are still operating on a business model of diverse model ranges back from a time when models were metal made from cheap rubber molds and production numbers were far more limited and sales more modest. GW is orders of magnitude in scale larger than it was in the early 90's when the Warhammer business model was taking off and they moved away from RPGs and boardgames.

They are prisoners to a logistical model of their own making and are frankly doing a good job with the materials they have available to them.
GW has many many issues, and the management style is compounded by the short termism infecting British manufacturing businesses combined with bs of their own. However their technical excellence is not up for question and neither is their logistical competence.

n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. 
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba




The Great State of New Jersey

GW doesn't have any manufacturing in the US, anything produced in the US is outsourced (and AFAIK thats limited to only books atm).

CoALabaer wrote:
Wargamers hate two things: the state of the game and change.
 
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

Yeah, the US production facility closed down years ago.

 
   
Made in us
Watches History Channel





IL

Is Nottingham powered by hamsters in a wheel? Even with a very dated system I have a hard time understanding how one facility can be such a drain on the power grid that it causes brown outs.

I have a small industrial park within half a mile of my home, there are no less than a dozen companies and manufacturing buildings there all making plastic injection parts and running c&c machines which draw comparable power, all of which are on a aging grid that goes back to the 80’s if not longer. We have constant power & internet interruptions any time there’s high winds or rainstorms but not from being over strained by the machinery.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/28 18:57:31


   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut






 RedDogMinis wrote:
Is Nottingham powered by hamsters in a wheel? Even with a very dated system I have a hard time understanding how one facility can be such a drain on the power grid that it causes brown outs.

I have a small industrial park within half a mile of my home, there are no less than a dozen companies and manufacturing buildings there all making plastic injection parts and running c&c machines which draw comparable power, all of which are on a aging grid that goes back to the 80’s if not longer. We have constant power & internet interruptions any time there’s high ends or rainstorms but not from being over strained by the machinery.


Same here. I find it very hard to believe that the electrical grid of a city the size of Nottingham isn't able to handle the addition of a couple of plastic injection machines. And if it's the case, can't they just open a factory in another city not far from Nottingham instead of waiting for the city to upgrade it's grid? I know that "delocating" some of the production.can cause some issues, but it seems those would be trivials

lost and damned log
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/519978.page#6525039 
   
 
Forum Index » Dakka Discussions
Go to: