[consultant]

TUV is like BS in the UK, so NF must be the french version.

Martin has made a good point about meeting the customers request. Ultimately, you can wave approval certs around all you like, if it does not meet the customers requirements, they simply will not order.

Also, it is not unusual for countries to want products to meet their own standards, as well as EU ones, although I am not sure of the real legality of this, however, no one has ever challenged this (that I am aware).

[Warhead]

Originally Posted by Martin-Subbynet

Ok, my 2 pence... (Mind you, considering we have no idea what this machine is, it might be worthless)

If you want to carry on supplying people in the EU with American products you better start making sure you provide the means of installation or maintenence. Trust me, US equipment on a site is a pain the a$$ if its industrial in nature.

You can't argue this point with the distributer and doing so will do you no good, because mark my words you'll be on the list to be dropped if you don't make any allowances.

So, how much is a pack of nuts and bolts going to cost you? It doesn't have to be every nut and bolt but most certainly any to do with installation/maintenence parts (ie. Covers on the unit, replaceable items) should come with Metric nuts/bolts.

Your French customer is right... Whoever they will be installing this machine for won't be happy... My dads business won't even touch anything which isn't metric because the customers don't want it. Standardising is very important in engineering / manufacturing areas because down time = money!

Why won't you go to your supplier about this? One US toolkit in many cases just isn't going to hack it because it will be lost at some point... and one kit between however many maintenence engineers is also not practical.

You don't need to redesign the whole product to change the nuts/bolts, and I can't help thinking this wouldn't be the first time they have sold to the EU market, so if you asked, they might be able to supply.

Hi Martin - thanks for your reply. It certainly isn't the first time this type of equipment has been sold in Europe, not by a long way, so I'm a little surprised that it has come up. As you say, if they (the distributors, customers or just the French in general!) don't like American fasteners, they can vote with their feet.

However, they don't appear to do so, and so my concern is if this is the first of the tide turning (in which case we must do something), or an isolated case which doesn't bear worrying about.

I appreciate that a complete re-design isn't necessary, but it would involve a tremendous amount of donkey-work in the design department to re-engineer every model to metric, and subsequently to keep two lots of inventory to serve the Euro market.

I suspect this will just go away (I spoke to my guy today and there was no mention of it).

Cheers!

[Warhead]

Originally Posted by consultant

TUV is like BS in the UK, so NF must be the french version.

Martin has made a good point about meeting the customers request. Ultimately, you can wave approval certs around all you like, if it does not meet the customers requirements, they simply will not order.

Also, it is not unusual for countries to want products to meet their own standards, as well as EU ones, although I am not sure of the real legality of this, however, no one has ever challenged this (that I am aware).

Thanks, I guessed it was a BS-equivalent...but that just comes back to whether the customer will "put up with" non-metric screws on a machine that is better/faster/cheaper whatever.