Re:Medical Device CEO Catches Stranger After Hours, Promptin...
by toss1 on Friday September 22, 2017 @09:58AM
(#15312187)
Glad you're not ok w/ theft & are looking for improving biz models.
Their biz model is pretty good, as evidenced by the fact that they're still going strong despite the theft.
Their IP is primarily the engine designs for high power-weight ratios, reliability, manufacture-ability, etc. They sell to military and high-performance hobbyists.
Foxcon is probably stopped only by the threat of Apple's large legal dept and the likelihood that they'd lose their biggest contract, probably be put out of biz, executives possibly executed for making an international incident/harming the PRC (it's China...).
Basically, compared to a startup who is a small customer of a foundry/machine shop, Apple stops Foxconn with threat of enormous power.
IMO, what this biz should have done differently is found a way to build in US or MX with a more trusted manufacturer.
Or, if they had no choice but China, split the work between multiple unrelated suppliers so that no one supplier has any surplus or ability to create it. e.g., buy the materials at Source A, provide to Source B for with requirement to produce X cast parts, take those cast parts to machine shop w/req to produce X machined parts and ship all bad parts for inspection. Preferably ship each intermediate step to your own agent for inspection and shipping to next step, partly for verification, and partly to prevent supply chain from making knock-offs.
I know one of my Swiss suppliers had some of their material mfg in China just for the Asia market, I expressed skepticism, and they said, "oh, no, we're making sure they have nothing -- we send them only the pre-made chemicals ready to mix & pour, and their only job is to pour/cure/cut. They have no idea what they are mixing, and it'd be nearly impossible to reverse engineer".
Their biz model is pretty good, as evidenced by the fact that they're still going strong despite the theft.
Their IP is primarily the engine designs for high power-weight ratios, reliability, manufacture-ability, etc. They sell to military and high-performance hobbyists.
Foxcon is probably stopped only by the threat of Apple's large legal dept and the likelihood that they'd lose their biggest contract, probably be put out of biz, executives possibly executed for making an international incident/harming the PRC (it's China...).
Basically, compared to a startup who is a small customer of a foundry/machine shop, Apple stops Foxconn with threat of enormous power.
IMO, what this biz should have done differently is found a way to build in US or MX with a more trusted manufacturer.
Or, if they had no choice but China, split the work between multiple unrelated suppliers so that no one supplier has any surplus or ability to create it. e.g., buy the materials at Source A, provide to Source B for with requirement to produce X cast parts, take those cast parts to machine shop w/req to produce X machined parts and ship all bad parts for inspection. Preferably ship each intermediate step to your own agent for inspection and shipping to next step, partly for verification, and partly to prevent supply chain from making knock-offs.
I know one of my Swiss suppliers had some of their material mfg in China just for the Asia market, I expressed skepticism, and they said, "oh, no, we're making sure they have nothing -- we send them only the pre-made chemicals ready to mix & pour, and their only job is to pour/cure/cut. They have no idea what they are mixing, and it'd be nearly impossible to reverse engineer".
In short, take more serious steps to protect IP.