How Fasteners Affect The Final Cost Of An Assembled Product

Whenever you are interested in producing a product or service, it is important to get issues of cost out of the way as soon as possible. A good business model requires you to figure out how much it will cost you to manufacture the product, and consequently how much you should sell it for so that you can make a profit. There are many things that will often influence the final cost of a product. It is up to you to ensure that all these are optimized to keep costs low, so that you can consequently produce products that will be cheaper but still of high quality.

Fasteners: Do they affect cost?

If you will use fasteners such as aluminum hex nuts or Hastelloy socket head cap screws, you will need to spend money on these fasteners. This consequently means that it will eat into your profits if you don’t take it into account when doing costing. In addition to that, the fasteners can also affect the final cost of the product in other indirect ways.

 
For instance, you could decide to use highly specialized fasteners for a purpose that does not need them. In such cases, you may need to buy tools such as spanners and wrenches that are designed to work with such fasteners. This will then increase the total cost you will need to set up the plant, since such tools may cost more than regular ones. In addition to that, you may also need to spend more in teaching your staff members how to use them.
Fastener types will also influence the longevity and ease of repair of such products. This will in turn indirectly affect the final cost of the product.

How to optimize this cost

If you are keen on keeping the cost of an assembled product down, you need to make sure that you make carefully thought out decisions regarding your fasteners. You will need to first choose the right fasteners. The goal is to ensure that they do their job well, without being needlessly expensive. Ideally, you should choose fasteners which don’t need highly specialized fastening tools so as to reduce the total cost of setting up the operation.
Buying your fasteners in bulk is also likely to help. Doing this helps you benefit from economies of scale, since it allows you to get the fasteners at cheaper wholesale prices. When buying in very large amounts, you can use this as leverage to negotiate for better rates from the vendor, further cutting down on the cost of purchase.
Sticking to a single supplier has also been found to be effective. You might need to spend some time finding a fastener vendor who offers very good value for money, and then becoming a valued long term customer to them. This gives you leverage that you can use to negotiate for better rates as well.
All in all, always remember that fastener cost will always influence the final cost of product assembly. If you are keen on minimizing the cost of production, this is something that you should definitely focus on.