Investments for machine tools – subject for study

After all requirements of the customer do you know what is the most important question to provide the offer for requested machine tools? Is it the budget and how much is it… When the production is stable and customer already has lot of different equipment it is much more easy to discuss with him the purchasing of new machine. More or less he knows to what he want to invest and what is the approximate price for it. It is much more easy to sell second, third machine to the same customer but to sell first you need to be the best and moreover you need to know that you are not spending your time for useless work.

There are thousands of companies who enter every day the world of machine tools or start new production or new application to get the new machine tool to their workshop. Sometimes they come with clear ideas but there a lot of them who doesn’t understand the price range, the clear requirements or do not have any financial charts to calculate the production income. Tube bending machine could be very good example to explain – you can get the tool for less than thousand euro, simple machine for 3-10 thousand euro, automatic CNC machine for price more than 100 thousand euro. Yes, even with simple tools you can make some jobs. So if your production is dozens parts per day and you do not care for human work (for example medium country salary for manpower is low) you can request the modern automatic machine and spend the time of the sales managers, but you will never buy it. The machine will not return back the investments and if there is no financial interest to get the equipment there will be no deal.

Normally it is not the fault from customer because he could not to have any knowledge for prices and possibilities. So it is normal job of the sales manager of the machine tool manufacturer to understand the reality of customer’s requirements and to provide him the proper recommendations. So here is the question about the budget. Lot of people can reply that they want to understand the prices and do not have budget at all. It depends but if there is no budget in private company it means the project had not passed any financial studies. Everywhere there are 2 parts – technical things (possibility to make part) and production things (possibility to make the part within the requested time). If there are no productivity indicators the reality of project is very weak so this could be valuable only for rich customers who can buy the machine only because of the possibilities or for the future projects. Or the application could be very high-priced like part for expensive cars or aerospace where only the possibilities are binding.