Latest Finding: Design Engineers Buy Most Bryce Security Screws
Oct 08, 2012
Last month, we analyzed and categorized the different types of industries our customers represent and surprisingly we found nearly 40% of them are design engineers. The industries within the category of Design Engineering varied from aerospace, medical device, original equipment manufacturers to electronic monitoring devices. As we dug deeper into analyzing why the bulk of our business comes from design engineers, four common themes surfaced.
Here are the top 4 reasons:
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1. Product Liability Protection- While nothing is 100% risk free, design engineers have found our fasteners to be an important safeguard against liability claims. Manufacturers may be held liable even if a well-designed product injures a consumer who misused or abused the product. Bryce fasteners can almost eliminate consumer access to parts of a product not intended to be compromised. One of our customers manufactures external cardiovascular pumps worn by patients with end stage heart disease. The device is worn on the patient’s belt and it works by controlling and sustaining the function of the ventricles. Our fasteners are installed on the pump to prevent the patient from tampering with the device and causing the company a detrimental liability claim.
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2. Intellectual Property Protection- Keeping a company’s trade secrets a secret on a design that’s competitive in the market place is essential. Not only is securing information over communication channels in your software extremely important but physically securing your device from anyone emulating your process is important too. We have a customer who makes glucose monitoring devices and uses our fasteners for this sole purpose.
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3. Warranty Service Control- A manufacturer who wants to control who services their device, ensure customer loyalty, and raise their brand’s value would fall under warranty service control. One of our customers makes a high tech radio for the military. They use our micro-size fasteners to secure the battery and specialty sensors. This prevents anyone but the manufacturer from accessing these areas of the radio. This simple step of controlling access directly improves their bottom line.
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4. Theft Protection- Original equipment manufacturers, particularly those who design retail security systems, alarms, and payment terminal stands use our Key-Rex™, and Penta-Plus™ fasteners for these applications. Our fasteners are placed in the mounts keeping the product from being unscrewed and stolen by the public.
Negligence, strict liability, breach of warranty, consumer protection, and medical malpractice claims plague our economy with nearly 300 billion dollars each year according to a 2007 study conducted by L.J. McQuillan and H. Abramyan. This amount was based on annual damage awards, plaintiff, and defense legal fees associated with tort-based litigation where medical malpractice and product liability cases dominated. It has forced design engineers to spend time anticipating potential risks and take necessary steps to safeguard against them. We are grateful for the opportunity to innovate a product that helps protect liabilities in our customer’s progressive designs. Their contributions in science, technology and engineering are vital in maintaining a prosperous economy.