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    152 points lr0 | 39 comments | | HN request time: 0.695s | source | bottom
    1. cjensen ◴[] No.42201750[source]
    The US has 222 C-17 Aircraft. A single C-17 costs over $300 million.

    If you ask Boeing for soap dispenser parts for these, what should they cost? Boeing charged $149,072 for the dispensers. That's $671 per plane. Is that too much?

    If you had to make these dispensers, make sure they conform to rules for aircraft parts and Air Force parts, provide formal responses to bids, etc., how much could you make them for?

    It seems high to me. The article says 8000%, which is less than $10 per plane. So while it seems high, it's definitely not 8000% high.

    replies(7): >>42201837 #>>42201842 #>>42201957 #>>42201992 #>>42202214 #>>42203503 #>>42204171 #
    2. edm0nd ◴[] No.42201837[source]
    What about designing the plane to use a common soap dispenser that doesnt cost $150k?

    Why not just use existing solutions like a soap dispenser that is found on common commercial passenger planes that Boeing already has and makes?

    There is no world where a simple soap dispenser is $150k.

    They seemingly design them like this so they can bilk the US government aka tax payers with these absurd prices for simple objects.

    replies(4): >>42201932 #>>42201942 #>>42201993 #>>42202002 #
    3. bagels ◴[] No.42201842[source]
    Can you imagine even being a one-man shop making 222 bespoke soap dispensers to some absurd spec AND jumping through all the documentation hoops that are required for only $150k? I wouldn't take that job. Sounds awful.
    replies(6): >>42201956 #>>42201973 #>>42202065 #>>42202083 #>>42202118 #>>42202157 #
    4. dyauspitr ◴[] No.42201932[source]
    It’s $150k for 222 dispensers, not just one. At $671 it’s overpriced but depending on what custom spec they had, maybe not by a whole lot. I’m imagining the metal soap dispensers in airline bathrooms maybe with some additional military specs.
    5. sschueller ◴[] No.42201942[source]
    Also I assume they are still using regular soap refills for these things or are they?
    replies(1): >>42211851 #
    6. wmf ◴[] No.42201956[source]
    You also need to provide exact replacement parts for 50 years so you should probably make 666 of them just to be safe.
    replies(1): >>42202171 #
    7. juliusdavies ◴[] No.42201957[source]
    Whoever wrote the article has never had to replace a cup holder in their car.
    8. JohnBooty ◴[] No.42201973[source]
    Yeah. People who haven't done manufacturing may laugh, but depending on how many custom parts there are you could easily spend most or all of that $150K just on the molds/tooling.

    Now, like you said... the root cause here is probably some absurd spec that prevents them from using some existing commercial soap dispenser whose costs have already been amortized.

    Then again, maybe the spec isn't absurd. The C-17 may need to fly in contested airspace. Maybe damage control is a concern. Maybe they can't use commercial soap dispensers because they're plastic and they don't want the plane to fill up with toxic fumes from burning plastic. That is a random guess. I have no idea.

    I couldn't find pictures of the soap dispenser, but here's apparently a urinal from some version of the Globemaster. I get the feeling these parts are kinda custom... https://www.flickr.com/photos/morganone/122375474/in/photost...

    replies(2): >>42202189 #>>42202192 #
    9. ◴[] No.42201992[source]
    10. ars ◴[] No.42201993[source]
    > What about designing the plane to use a common soap dispenser that doesnt cost $150k?

    Which one? Whichever you pick you need to stock that exact same one for the next 50 to 100 years. By the time you finish exactly defining it, you are back where you started.

    (Also it's not 150k each - that's the price for the entire fleet.)

    11. arcticbull ◴[] No.42202002[source]
    I mean it doesn't cost $157K it costs $671. They ordered a couple hundred of them.

    This one from CB2 is $40 and it doesn't conform to FAA rules and it's not MIL-SPEC. [1]

    I suspect if I wanted a limited run of soap dispensers, I was only willing to buy 300 made-to-order, tested and conformant to niche military specifications and aviation specifications, I'd probably end up paying a decent chunk more than CB2.

    How much does the entertainment system in your car cost vs an iPad? Is that a rip-off, or is it a niche, custom part that has to be made from automotive grade components?

    How much does the soap dispenser cost in a 777 bathroom? That's the real point of comparison, not CB2.

    [1] https://www.cb2.com/ramsey-calacatta-gold-marble-soap-pump/s...

    replies(3): >>42202141 #>>42202714 #>>42202838 #
    12. jjallen ◴[] No.42202065[source]
    I think that isolating their relationship to a single transaction like this is disingenuous. Our government pays this company many billions per year. They likely or should have had extra of these laying around for replacements. It’s not unreasonable to expect them to charge a reasonable amount for everything.

    But for some reason Boeing continually gets away with being Boeing for some reason.

    13. hackernewds ◴[] No.42202083[source]
    the article believes they should cost $10 though
    replies(1): >>42202092 #
    14. Maxion ◴[] No.42202092{3}[source]
    They probably would if they were made in china, and sold in Walmart by the millions.
    replies(1): >>42202162 #
    15. dmurray ◴[] No.42202118[source]
    Sounds interesting!

    The first year you learn how hard it is, you spend 80% of your time on compliance documentation and 80% of your budget on tooling. You still don't have a satisfactory product or a mastery of filling out the forms. It drags on into the second year, you're living on ramen but eventually deliver it (if there's one thing the government procurement process is tolerant of, it's delays) and get paid.

    The third year you take on a additional contract, for 200 toilet flushes or whatever. New manufacturing challenges, but at least you're getting the paperwork down.

    After a few more jobs, you've cracked it. You start bidding for all the military's bathroom-related contracts. At five or six contracts a year, you have a million or two rolling in (and low manufacturing costs - remember, the spec is such that you can produce it for 80x lower) and you've hired five employees.

    By year five, the only thing you care about improving is sales. You still have 5 machine shop staff, paid well but not enough to make them wealthy. You focus on hiring ex-military brass and making them sales reps and lobbyists. You're into tens of millions of revenue, that is, profit.

    Year 8, you sell the thing to Northrop or to a private equity firm and go retire on an island.

    replies(2): >>42202426 #>>42204424 #
    16. oivey ◴[] No.42202141{3}[source]
    Your example is a marble soap dispenser. Did you go on Google and search for the most expensive one you could find?
    replies(1): >>42202213 #
    17. mjevans ◴[] No.42202157[source]
    I wonder what's special enough for this to be different from certified aviation grade equipment? It'd be nice it they could either make a bunch of a design (usefully) for the military to fulfill mil-spec, or if they could take an existing design and just make it in a mil-spec compliant way.
    replies(1): >>42202489 #
    18. blitzar ◴[] No.42202162{4}[source]
    tbh the only solution to the problem is to spend the $250,000 it would probably cost in tooling etc and fill the Boeing ~1,000 order and sell another 99,000 to the public. At $10 each and without paying yourself anything you would probably just about break even.
    19. cenamus ◴[] No.42202171{3}[source]
    But you also get paid for those
    20. bagels ◴[] No.42202189{3}[source]
    You probably also really don't want slippery floors at a critical (or any) time.
    replies(1): >>42202301 #
    21. lazide ◴[] No.42202192{3}[source]
    Also, every material that goes into them needs to be tracked (with paperwork) since it was mined/smelted.
    22. arcticbull ◴[] No.42202213{4}[source]
    I did, yes, lol. I mean the most expensive one on sale at CB2 which is kind of a mid-range home furnishings store. I'm confident I can find a soap dispenser that costs more than $671 for home use, though.

    [edit] Here you go, just under $845. I present you the Labrazel Discus Brown Pump Dispenser available at Nieman's. Only $77 per month thanks to the magic of Affirm. Good news is thanks to Black Friday you get a $125 gift card. Still not MIL-SPEC though.

    https://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/labrazel-discus-brown-pump-di...

    replies(1): >>42202442 #
    23. Suppafly ◴[] No.42202214[source]
    They apparently aren't really any different from the sort you see in public restrooms and those are so cheap the supply companies give them to you for free when you buy a case of soap.
    24. XorNot ◴[] No.42202301{4}[source]
    You also can't just drill a couple of holes wherever to mount it and you don't want it turning to a missile if the plane has to do any aggressive maneuvering.
    25. neilv ◴[] No.42202426{3}[source]
    If you can pull it off as a worker-owned co-op (and don't ruin it in year 8, but keep on working at the scale you want), that's a really nice business.

    Though you might want to also take on some non-government contracts, both to keep everyone busy in between government contract demands on their roles, and to reduce the risk of having "only one customer".

    26. Y_Y ◴[] No.42202442{5}[source]
    > The finest natural materials and the most exceptional quality of craftsmanship converge at Labrazel due to a singular focus—the design and creation of luxury accessories for the bath

    Maybe the Pentagon should check these guys out.

    replies(1): >>42202515 #
    27. rocqua ◴[] No.42202489{3}[source]
    Boeing could have specced some weird stuff on the dispenser, just to make it harder to get elsewhere. Things like impact resistance, yield strength in a fire, or counter-rotating threads to prevent it shaking out.
    28. ◴[] No.42202515{6}[source]
    29. RateMyPE ◴[] No.42202714{3}[source]
    > How much does the entertainment system in your car cost vs an iPad? Is that a rip-off, or is it a niche, custom part that has to be made from automotive grade components?

    You can't say it's a niche part when the item is being manufactured in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Car companies reuse components between models and sometimes even between brands.

    And that's without mentioning that the average 7-8" screen or CPU in a car's entertainment system isn't a custom made part, they are bought at bulk from other manufacturers that produce (tens of) millions of units per year.

    You can find entertainment system replacements for most cars that cost a fraction of what the car manufacturer charges consumers.

    I struggle to see how a mass-produced, way more expensive (for the customer), lower-quality product isn't simply a rip-off.

    30. barbequeer ◴[] No.42202838{3}[source]
    > How much does the soap dispenser cost in a 777 bathroom

    This might not be a fair comparison, since Boeing also makes the ones for commercial customers, and probably overcharges them also.

    > This one from CB2 is $40 and it doesn't conform to FAA rules and it's not MIL-SPEC.

    People talk about MIL-SPEC like its some unattainable gold-standard. I can buy a MIL-SPEC rated Thinkpad from Lenovo for less than $600. I mean, sure, it doesn't dispense soap...

    replies(1): >>42203473 #
    31. _djo_ ◴[] No.42203473{4}[source]
    MIL-SPEC is a very broad category. It just means it conforms to a military specification, which can be very simple and easy to meet in some cases. But when the MIL-SEC refers to safety-critical and flight-critical specifications it's a whole other story, and does become an extremely costly and difficult to meet set of standards for good reason.

    Compare the cost of a MIL-SPEC ThinkPad with that of an actual flight control computer designed to be an integral part of an aircraft's avionics.

    replies(1): >>42204114 #
    32. myflash13 ◴[] No.42203503[source]
    Here's an idea: what if the US military just had in-house manufacturing capability and could build soap dispensers (or anything else) to specification at basically the cost of the materials? The factory, the staff, and everything else would be a built-in sunk cost, because they're already in operation.

    The analogy here would be hiring a software consulting firm to make every little one-line-of-code change to your website, instead of just having a full-time in-house developer who could make small one-time changes and maintenance at no additional cost.

    replies(1): >>42206552 #
    33. barbequeer ◴[] No.42204114{5}[source]
    Yes, but this is for soap.
    replies(1): >>42204153 #
    34. _djo_ ◴[] No.42204153{6}[source]
    Sure, and there are useful points in the rest of this conversation about whether you need something that special for a soap dispenser and what might be driving up costs, and whether a commercial off the shelf alternative really was an option.

    I wasn't trying to cover all that, I was just pointing out that MIL-SPEC is a very wide category and therefore effectively meaningless unless you're pointing out what type of application it is.

    35. ano-ther ◴[] No.42204171[source]
    Here is the original report and the press release with pictures [1,2]

    > The DoD OIG found that overpayment occurred because the Air Force did not:

    > Validate the accuracy of data used for contract negotiation.

    > Conduct contract surveillance to identify price increases during contract execution.

    > Review invoices to determine fair and reasonable prices before payment.

    > In addition, the DoD OIG found that the DoD did not require the contracting officer to verify the accuracy of the bill of materials before negotiation or to review invoices for allowable, allocable, and reasonable costs before payment.

    This does not sound like expensive MilSpec. Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that the DoD Inspector General is aware of these before making such accusations?

    [1] https://www.dodig.mil/reports.html/Article/3948601/audit-of-...

    [2] https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3948604/press...

    36. ryandvm ◴[] No.42204424{3}[source]
    I worked on a government software contractor that ended up growing from 10 people to 300 people in about 8 years and sold to Booz Allen Hamilton for around $50 million. You absolutely nailed it.

    Sadly I didn't get much of a payday out of it.

    replies(1): >>42210438 #
    37. jfengel ◴[] No.42206552[source]
    People complain about government employees, and continually insist that private industry can do it better.

    It would almost certainly be cheaper and more effective to do it in house. But instead, in-house capabilities are continually decreasing. The actual government agencies are reduced to supervisory roles.

    Stories like this usually result in even more hatred for government employees and more outsourcing.

    38. rrr_oh_man ◴[] No.42210438{4}[source]
    Any thought what you should have done differently, with the information available at the time?
    39. ryandrake ◴[] No.42211851{3}[source]
    I’m sure the Boeing Soap is $50K per liter.