Re: High Cost of Sportplanes

You are right in some aspects, but fall short on others. The 15 an hour salary is not bad for production. And by all means hire a few at that top brackett and a dern good lead for more if you have to. But benefits can come in time if successful. Rome was not built in a day. People looking for a career , especially where there are few choices may jump on the chance to have an opportunity...if the biz is successful and they were there from the get go ..I am sure most people realize it puts them in great position for advancment when the company has proven a money maker. And the benefits come in time. Wasted labor sure, that is why I mentioned it earlier in the thread...can em! FAST! Fix it right off the bat.
Seems folks are having a hard time understanding that there will be a huge difference in time required in building a light sport plane versus a 757 or a DC-10. We are talking a very small space needed ..one decent hangar and a small crew to start up with. Let the biz grow if it will, but if you think you have to start out as large as say a Boeing Corporation you will fail.
I remember when John Deere was opening a plant in Grovetown GA they had a training class through the GA Dept of Labor. I am sure the Labor Dept paid for alot of that , just to get folks jobs....it may be something for a new aircraft production facility to look into. Be a great way to teach and weed out slackers at the same time.
Supervisor, as I have said....you would be the boss, with one lead in a 15-20 man shop...I am sure someone with the smarts to design a plane can figure out how to run a payroll for that few people. Again...as the company grows let it.....don't start it to big. Well taxes come out of the employees checks, but you do have to pay the workers comp stuff on them which can be a pain in the rear.
I have 3 rollaways, I don't know of many mechs(production or line) that do not have their own tools..and other than specialty tools and expendibles most places want you to have tools.You would have a cost in drill bits etc...but that is not labor that is tooling cost. Just as building a jig is tooling cost and not labor cost. It all adds up on the plane but we have to keep expenses seperate and where they belong in order to see where improvements can be made. Heck I would be a good guy and buy each production mech a new Campbell-Hausfield drill and a surplus rivet gun! ;)
But if anyone was costing me 45 bucks an hour personally on labor they would be rolling their box to the door...just don't see it for such a small plane. Fellow where I live built a Zenith 601 in three months by himself and had never done sheet metal work! It's not hard to put one together, and with some practice you get very good and very fast. Building those first two planes would be that curve, they will be the planes that are not in a hurry anyway.

Patrick
student SP
aircraft structural mech

"Jim Carriere" <jimcarriere@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:7e86f$432e17b5$ce94b463$3684@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
W P Dixon wrote:
Yes Jim,
You are wrong, I've worked in the biz for over 20 years. And you know what! Most places hire Joe Smoe right off the street and show him how to shoot rivets and put him or her on the line.....shocking isn't it. ;) 

OK, but I think you're missing a few points:

1) The shop is not entirely brand new people.
2) There is labor not directly put into assembling the product (training, supervision, management, payroll).
3) There is some wasted labor (employess who turn out to be no good)
4) There is cost of labor in addition to the hourly wage (taxes, benefits)
5) Other miscellaneous expenses (keep the lights on, pay off machinery and tools)

This is why, even if an airplane can be built with 500 man-hours, the cost to the company will be much higher than the $10-15 an hour paycheck that the Joe Smoe gets. 

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: whats wrong with eastern germans?
    ... And now let's roll tape on Grinch, competing in the 3 metre strawman ... it's not a production factor. ... because it can be reproduced at arbitrarily low cost. ... >time and labor. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Charging a Fee for Wedding Photography
    ... Obviously consumable materials, outsourcing (cost to ... rental equipment to be used, labor for production and post ...
    (alt.photography)
  • Re: Why Apple manufacturing will remain overseas
    ... of the factors involved in manufacturing high-tech products are not ... Sugar cane harvesting is very low tech and labor ... cost is a much more significant portion of the costs of production. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: Robotopia - Tax the Robots, live free.
    ... to pay more than those who have very little capacity to pay. ... The cost of the goods ... value of that which contributed to the production. ... with labor. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Labors share
    ... He goes on to meet Malthus and Marx in the middle. ... labor, and it helped him win in the marketplace. ... Capital increases the rates of production. ... indicative of economic performance or political economy at all. ...
    (sci.econ)