When Cannondale decides to ship a particular model of bike, it pulls the appropriate- ate frame from the unfinished goods area and ships it off to the paint booth. Two painters each have two colors of paint at the ready, and a switch to any of Cannondale's colors takes about 30 seconds. Hence, random paint color switches are a normal part of the work flow. At this point, the bar code leaves the frame The drying oven is dangerously close to the temperature at which paper ignites, and Miller is still working on a system to be able to carry the bar codes through the paint process. The WebSpeed program gets an additional chance to help after painting, though. In the decal room, the diagrams for correct placement of all decals is on an intranet web page. 

I asked what was wrong with a book of diagrams instead of a computer. 

"I can update the web page and enforce the update," Miller explained. "Otherwise", I have the burden of finding all the old books and destroying them."

After the decal room and a clear paint topcoat, the frames are headed for the final assembly tramline. Components are added, the bikes are boxed, and soon they reach the sales floor.

"We've tried to be innovative not only on a product front, but also in areas like bookkeeping and accounting," said Tom Armstrong, major domo of Cannondale public relations. "Our factory is more expensive than a factory in the Far East. So we try to run an efficient factory. 

"We try to go inside our competitors' development cycle. If they can do a product development cycle in 18 months, we want to do it in a year. If they do it in a year, we want to do it in six months."

And then Armstrong explained where this is leading Cannondale's product development cycles and customer communications: 

 Cannondale engineer Bill Miller checks a Raven monocoque carbon fiber frame against the intranet specification sheet for that model.
"If anything, we're moving away from model years. We have midseason bikes we introduce in February or March. We have no plans to slow down. The catalog is quickly becoming a dinosaur, because we can't update it as often. Our web site is a focus of much greater effort. We were able to put midseason bikes and 1999 models on the web site quite easily."

In addition, Cannondale can zero in on consumer needs with more varied product. For example, they offer a half-dozen different European-spec commuting frames with features such as generator mounts and kickstand mounts, and they don't need big sales volumes to support all those models.

Miller wrinkled his nose at the news that I owned one of the first-year Cannondales, built in 1983. He's much happier with the way today's bikes are built. We should be happier too. The fact that Cannondale can so easily implement design improvements, respond to customer demand, and cater to niche markets is good news for those of us who buy and ride bikes. 

Technical Editor John Schubert is thinking about bar coding everything in his house so he can keep better track of it all. To visit Cannondale's website, go to www.cannondale.com.

Reprinted from: Adventure Cyclist, September/October 1998

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