I work in hardware, and wanted to give my perspective on this.
Designing and building hardware is expensive, really expensive. If you don't take the time to follow proper procedures you are not only wasting your time, but often hundreds to thousands of dollars of parts you are never going to use. Going ahead without thinking can easily put you 2 or more weeks behind just because that is how long it takes your supplier to make what you ordered. You don't just quickly spin up an instance of a test, you have to buy or rent equipment that is often in the thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
I can see exactly why you wouldn't want to just go to Home Depot when working on equipment like what MDA makes. Say you go to Home depot and buy your fasteners, now the company has to pay for your time and reimburse the cost, which is almost certainly going to be as much or more to process than the courier charge ($30-$40) to ship the parts from the company you are making monthly payments to regardless. Then there is the additional risk of bringing in parts that could get mixed up with real production parts. There is a huge risk if you somehow get that Home Depot fastener mixed up with the special aerospace fastener you are using, the extra cost is worth it as insurance that "bad" fasteners aren't getting into the product. I can say from experience, it is ridiculously easy to get parts mixed up even when you are careful.
I fail to see how filling out $2000 in paperwork will stop you from getting screws mixed up. Because that's what the cost was, apparently. Not the actual equipment.
Comments
I work in hardware, and wanted to give my perspective on this.
Designing and building hardware is expensive, really expensive. If you don't take the time to follow proper procedures you are not only wasting your time, but often hundreds to thousands of dollars of parts you are never going to use. Going ahead without thinking can easily put you 2 or more weeks behind just because that is how long it takes your supplier to make what you ordered. You don't just quickly spin up an instance of a test, you have to buy or rent equipment that is often in the thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
I can see exactly why you wouldn't want to just go to Home Depot when working on equipment like what MDA makes. Say you go to Home depot and buy your fasteners, now the company has to pay for your time and reimburse the cost, which is almost certainly going to be as much or more to process than the courier charge ($30-$40) to ship the parts from the company you are making monthly payments to regardless. Then there is the additional risk of bringing in parts that could get mixed up with real production parts. There is a huge risk if you somehow get that Home Depot fastener mixed up with the special aerospace fastener you are using, the extra cost is worth it as insurance that "bad" fasteners aren't getting into the product. I can say from experience, it is ridiculously easy to get parts mixed up even when you are careful.
I fail to see how filling out $2000 in paperwork will stop you from getting screws mixed up. Because that's what the cost was, apparently. Not the actual equipment.