Case studies

Price the first tool as a prototype you will throw away, and hold the difference for the replacement.

An injection-moulding programme in Nairobi spent four months and two revisions trying to get one tool right, and shipped six weeks after switching to a cheap tool it expected to replace.

Plan the bridge tool into the schedule so the first parts are a test rather than a commitment.

The same argument as the Nairobi programme, run deliberately rather than by accident: a bracket maker planned two tools from the start and used the first to find eleven changes.