On Saturday, February 4, 2023 at 8:26:23 AM UTC-5,
[email protected] wrote:
Our club has been looking into buying a new sailplane for secondary transition training and enjoyment by qualified members. Taking our youth and newer members to another dimension of soaring is our top priority. Our team of leaders are actively looking
at a couple of sailplane models that would satisfy our needs, one is the ASK21, and another is the DG1001.
Both ships are perfect for our needs and the also have a great track record over a period of time. We began our search a couple of weeks ago gathering details and bringing the results back to the committee for discussion.
The main concern with the purchasing of the new ship is the delivery time both manufacturers was a wait time of three to five years for estimated delivery of a new ship. Which brings us to the question of why and if there is such a backlog of orders
then possibly production expansion should be considered. Developing a joint venture between manufacturers to build certain ships like the ASK and the 1001 under licenses in a country like Poland, or Slovenia or any other country capable of producing a
quality product at a reasonable delivery date and probably lower cost.
Take this fact into consideration, it only took 2 years from start to finish to build the first 747, it also only took 72 hours to get to the moon, a horse pulled covered wagon made it across the USA in 6 months.
When we needed to ramp up production for delivery we out sourced production, maybe these companies should consider ramping up production to help the customer. Old Bob , The Purist
My sense from watching this over time, particularly Schleicher, is that they are prepared to sacrifice production volume for stability of the business on a longer term basis. The ASK-21 is at the core of this strategy. It evens out production capacity
usage as new products ( like the AS33)take longer to bring to production and older products(ASG-29) lose order volume to other new products like JS-3.
They have also had significant supply chain issues. They we having trouble getting fiberglass last year. I doubt that was the only issue. Covid also affected output.
Additionally German employment law makes it very hard to shed excess labor capacity so they manage the business to keep everyone working.
Not an easy business to be in.
FWIW
UH
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