Nope, not tooling, although that's a good suggestion. It's the first thing I thought of.
The explanation from some long time Ruger fans and people close to the company is that the Board of Directors, and in turn the company management took a good hard look at the entire production philosophy of the company and made some major changes.
Ruger used to build large quantities of a given gun and store them for future sale, then change the line over to another model. While that philosophy had some cost benefits in keeping the number of tooling and production line changes down in any one reporting period, and in allowing greater time for tool refurb and repair between production runs of a given model, inventory costs both in terms of finished product and supplier parts were extremely high. They were also very inflexible with respect to the marketplace, and any unexpected parts shortages or equipment breakdowns were devastating, bringing the lines down without the ability to change over to another model.
The change was to run more models in parallel and to keep both parts and product inventories to a minimum - almost a 'just in time' production philosophy. In making that changeover they had to evaluate what models were the most profitable given the use of available assets - if you only had the machines and facilities to build, say seven models, which ones were the most profitable to build. The ROA lost out in that evaluation They simply felt that the market would not accept a price increase that would allow the ROA to compete with the Vaquero, Blackhawk, etc. for available production assets in terms of profitability.
The explanation from some long time Ruger fans and people close to the company is that the Board of Directors, and in turn the company management took a good hard look at the entire production philosophy of the company and made some major changes.
Ruger used to build large quantities of a given gun and store them for future sale, then change the line over to another model. While that philosophy had some cost benefits in keeping the number of tooling and production line changes down in any one reporting period, and in allowing greater time for tool refurb and repair between production runs of a given model, inventory costs both in terms of finished product and supplier parts were extremely high. They were also very inflexible with respect to the marketplace, and any unexpected parts shortages or equipment breakdowns were devastating, bringing the lines down without the ability to change over to another model.
The change was to run more models in parallel and to keep both parts and product inventories to a minimum - almost a 'just in time' production philosophy. In making that changeover they had to evaluate what models were the most profitable given the use of available assets - if you only had the machines and facilities to build, say seven models, which ones were the most profitable to build. The ROA lost out in that evaluation They simply felt that the market would not accept a price increase that would allow the ROA to compete with the Vaquero, Blackhawk, etc. for available production assets in terms of profitability.
