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It's Only Common Sense: The Cheapest Parts Money Can Buy

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...It‘s always amazed me that the same people who claim to be building the best products on the market are also the people who want to buy the cheapest parts they can find.

I’m sure you’ve heard a customer say, “We are building the best missile, MRI, automobile, computer that money can buy and to do this we have to have the very best components money can buy. If you can give us the best there is, the highest quality there is, we will happily pay for them.” Can you really tell me you’ve never heard this from any of your customers? They’ve never told you that money is not object? I’m shocked. I would have thought all of your customers, or at least those who claim they build the best products in the world, would have told you this at some point. Instead, our customers like to tell us they need the best price possible…or else. If we do not provide the best price possible they’ll find someone who will--even if that means going offshore. Even if it means playing fast and loose with ITAR regulations.

In other words, do whatever you need to do to give them the cheapest boards money can buy or else. They want us to do whatever we have to do, cut whatever corners we can, to give them the cheapest products under the sun.

I am amazed by this because it’s just not common sense. When a great chef creates he wants to use the best ingredients money can buy. If a great artist is creating masterpiece he wants to use the best materials money can buy; when a craftsman builds a beautiful cabinet he wants to buy the best wood money company. All of these people want to use the very best materials or ingredients possible.

How can many of our customers claim they need the cheapest materials and then turn around and tell their customers they are building the best products in the world? Sorry, it doesn’t add up. You can’t make a great product and out of crummy materials.

When I challenge my friends on the buying end of the business about this they tell me that all PC shops are the same: The quality is exactly the same; the technology is the same. Their company has done its homework and they know their suppliers and they know that it will all get down to price. They actually believe they can buy the cheapest products possible and still be covered enough to put out the best products in the world.

How does that work? I can tell you the answer to that question is, it doesn’t. You just can’t build the best products in the world when using the cheapest products in the world.

Think about this:

• Do you really want to depend on a pacemaker built with the cheapest components money can buy?
• Do you really want a nuclear reactor to be made up of the cheapest products money can buy?
• Do you want your airliner/helicopter/surgical laser/security system/automobile built with the cheapest parts money can buy?

Sometimes I wish we could call these customers on this so that when they tell us we are too high and they have to go with the best price possible (a euphemism for cheapest) we could ask them if they are really proud of themselves and their products. Are they proud when they tell their customers that their product has been built with the cheapest parts that money can buy?

Can you imagine their ad if they were being totally honest? It would read something like: “We have searched far and wide and gone to the four corners of the Earth trying to find the cheapest parts we could buy to put into our products. These parts were made by the lowest-paid workers we could find with as little reliability as possible. Now we can pass on those savings to you. Just think: You can own our product--the cheapest product on the market today--made up of the cheapest parts money can buy!”

That would be one hell of an ad, wouldn’t it? At least, for once, it would be the truth. It’s only common sense.