1) From a pure manufacturing perspective, consolidation makes all the sense in the world, especially with products designed for modern manufacturing methods.
2) The older a product is, the less likelihood it was designed for modern manufacturing methods. Dare I say "1911" or "lever action rifle?"
3) Older products can be brought on-line with 21st century manufacturing, but it usually requires a healthy (and expensive) injection of technology, e.g. Ruger's 1911 line or Cabot arms' breakthrough EDM'ed 1911s.
4) Eclectic small group cultures cannot survive consolidation long term. At least, I've never seen it happen. Efforts to maintain the smaller group culture within the larger whole either slowly trickles out or backfires.
5) Firearms are often more than the sum of their parts, which is why the market sometimes confound the industry.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteare you talking about moving various distant divisions into a central facility, or acquiring other, typically smaller companies, and trying to fold them into the parent corp?
Well they certainly screwed up Marlin...... the quality control on lever guns went to hell big-time, I hear. Too bad, I'd love me a trapper mod. 39 takedown, but to cut down an old one would be sacrilege.
ReplyDeleteI guess Para needs to change their "Coming Soon" banner on the LDA Officer to "Never Gonna Happen".
ReplyDeleteRemington must make a decision on the viability of the Para brand. And if they decide to keep it, then they need to get it's logistics problem fixed.
The older a product is, the less likelihood it was designed for modern manufacturing methods.
ReplyDeleteWhich explains the teething troubles that Remington is having with the R51, a design created in 1918.
Eclectic small group cultures cannot survive consolidation long term.
Wave bye-bye to everything that made AAC a cool place that made cool guns. On the other hand, Para could use a little less "eclecticsm" and a litle more Six-Sigma...
Eclectic small group cultures cannot survive consolidation long term.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason why IBM, when it developed the PC, did it in Boca Raton and not Endicott or Poughkeepsie. And, it didn't take long for the Borg to fatally corrupt that process, either. It's the culture, stupid.
I understand the attraction putting everything under one roof has, but today's technology - not to mention tomorrow's - easily allows distributed manufacturing. Boeing makes 777s from small and large sub-assemblies built elsewhere.
It wouldn't surprise me if Remington sold off the lever line to someone like Ruger or Henry, and I fully expect AAC suppressors to soon come in green with parkerized bolt handles.
rems loss is sigs gain... the green box will make ACC less desirable.. unless rem shutters ilion (adding to the great fleet of windowless, roofless, weed-overgrown former manufacturing facilities that populate The "New" NY from border to border), and moves to a gun friendly clim that isnt trying to bring RKBA down... i feel bad for the employees, but I feel worse about their gun grabbing fascist-progressive leader's actions. this is war
ReplyDeleteVery perceptive stuff, Michael.
ReplyDeleteSince I don't see Rem putting in the time and dough necessary to rebuild Marlin into at least an echo of what it used to be, I hope they sell the brand outright, maybe to Henry.
I am not categorically opposed to the consolidation, but as you imply, it is likely to work out a lot better for some brands than others.
If we must have consolidation, I devoutly hope they close the Ilion plant and leave NY entirely. Move everything to Alabama.
That eloquent pro-constitutional gesture will ease the pain of uprooting firms like DPMS from Minnesota, which has its problems but is not an anti-gun hellhole.
Honestly, it's 2014, there ought not to be a single gun company left in the northeastern states with the exceptions of New Hampshire and Maine.
Per GunTalk, AAC will go the way of the dodo bird, and DPMS may be on the chopping block as well. Can you confirm/deny?
ReplyDeleteAlien:
ReplyDeleteWhen IBM bought Rolm in Silicon Valley, they stated that nothing would be changed. Ink wasn't dry before they started instituting their North East management mentality culture.
IBM dress code! And all the rest of it. They never did understand why the spark jumped ship, or disappeared. They just dumped the company and looked for other innovative places to purchase and ruin.
Any one involved in a company being bought by a N. East business should plan for a quick exit. Especially the founders.
Remington has consolidated all their small brands in a single facility.
ReplyDeleteI would say that we'll see the Saturn/GM model replicated as we go forward. Remember, Saturn was designed as a separate company within GM. It eventually "evolved" into nothing more than a nameplate, one of many.
While Remington will no doubt maintain the nameplates, the unique culture behind the guns/accessories will, IMHO, disappear.
Does that mean Remington will make bad guns? Not at all. Look at the DPMS Gen 2, which is much more a product of Remington product development in conjunction with DPMS input, and its a superb, groundbreaking .308.
I mourn the loss of small companies (and the loss of employment for many of my friends), but that doesn't mean that Big Green doesn't know how to build guns.
mb
On another message board it was claimed that the "vintage" machinery used to produce the Marlins were moved, but the machinists who could nurse it along to produce in-spec parts were left behind. Apparently the current mgmt were not made aware of the challenges embedded in the vintage machinery. Unclear if that was an oversight on the part of the seller or the buyer.
ReplyDeleteThat supposedly resulted in out-of-spec Marlins being mfgr at the new location :-(
RSR
rems loss is sigs gain... the green box will make ACC less desirable.. unless rem shutters ilion (adding to the great fleet of windowless, roofless, weed-overgrown former manufacturing facilities that populate The "New" NY from border to border), and moves to a gun friendly clim that isnt trying to bring RKBA down... i feel bad for the employees, but I feel worse about their gun grabbing fascist-progressive leader's actions. this is war
ReplyDelete