AAK development of Hydraulic Relief Valve for Aerospace equipment

Some time ago, an old customer in the United States needed us to sign a
confidentiality agreement to develop a new hydraulic relief valve. The drawings
of the hydraulic relief valve were sent 1 month after the confidentiality
agreement was signed. The customer requested that if we were not able to
develop it, they would witness us destroy the drawings and documents of the
hydraulic relief valve by video. It's the first time for this customer to be so
formal.

After receiving the drawings of hydraulic relief valve, we knew that it was to
match with a set of aerospace equipment developed by a world top 500 enterprise
in the United States. AAK engineers reviewed the drawings for 3 days and still
didn't write the sample program. This hydraulic relief valve is not only small
in size, but also has material requirements, machining accuracy requirements
and use frequency requirements that exceed the parameter requirements of the
hydraulic relief valves we have seen. We estimated that the overall development
cost will not be less than 20,000 US dollars, and the success rate will be
about 10%.

When we mentioned the development cost and difficulty to the customer, the
customer's answer is: now I'll give you 30,000 dollars and give you 1 year of
time. If the development is successful, you can wait for the order of hydraulic
relief valve. If the development fails, this $30,000 will be deducted from the
payment for AAK in the future. That’s to say that the customer will prepay for
the development cost of the hydraulic relief valve, but if it fails, we will
need to refund it by deducting from the future payment gradually.

I did not hesitate to reply to the email and was willing to try to develop this
hydraulic relief valve. Our engineer joked that next, it is estimated that he
will lose a layer of skin. If it fails, it may be not only a waste of tens of
thousands of dollars in development costs, but also the loss of his own job. I
told him that the success of the hydraulic relief valve development would be
counted as the contribution of the technical team, and the failure would be
counted as mine, because I can't fail to live up to the customer's support for
our development.

Some people in AAK can not understand how this could be a kind of support.
Maybe he didn't think about a question, that is, what would the mentality of
the technical team be without customer support? Behind these are two completely
different ways of thinking. One is that if you haven't done it yet, think about
failure first, think about whether there is a bottom plan first, and if not,
don't do it. There is also a way of thinking, which is to think about how to
start first. If conditions permit, start working first.

The difference between these two ways of thinking is not just the difference
between conservative and radical, but whether people are the key factor to
create value. With the starting money, the hard work of the technical team and
the best logistics support of AAK, the probability of successful development of
hydraulic relief valve may be high.

AAK hydraulic relief valve, no matter how difficult it is, just do it first.
You are welcome to give it a try.

https://www.aakindustry.com/info-detail/hy , draulic-relief-valve-aak179

Click to Enlarge