WAHL Hair Clipper — Production Planning
Reverse engineering and full production planning of a WAHL Clipper U-Clip hair clipper (pets). Tearing down a real consumer appliance to rebuild every document needed to manufacture it from scratch: company hypothesis, BOM, production flow, assembly sheets and 3-level packaging.
Project details
The hypothetical company
Wahl Clipper Corporation is a US company founded in 1919 (HQ: Sterling, Illinois). ~1,500 employees, presence in roughly 165 countries.
Wahl Argentina started operations in July 2001 as the first Wahl Clipper Corporation subsidiary in Latin America. It originally operated in Buenos Aires under a marketing-and-sales profile, and from August 2005 added local manufacturing.
For the exercise we assumed the Argentine subsidiary had the productive capacity to take on the assembly and packaging of the U-Clip model.
The product
Technical sheet
Product sheet (original document, in Spanish) — general views + technical data + accessories.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Model | Clipper U-Clip |
| Category | Pets |
| Power | 16 W |
| Motor vibration | 7,200 RPM |
| Color | Blue / Black |
| Weight | 0.450 kg |
| Dimensions (L × W × H) | 23.4 × 6 × 6.5 cm |
| Main materials | RF polymer (housing) + stainless steel (blade) |
| Features | Ergonomic · 100% copper cable · adjustable cut-length lever (1–3.5 mm) · comb-guide accessories |
Cutaway render showing motor, coil and blade mechanism layout inside the blue housing.
Production planning
Gantt chart
10 months split into five activity blocks:
Full Gantt chart (original document, in Spanish) — month 1 through month 10.
| Block | Tasks | Months |
|---|---|---|
| Proposal | Problem identification · research · requirement definition | 1–2 |
| Design | Creative process · simulators · LCA · alternative · target-market matrix · packaging | 2–6 |
| Technical implementation | Specifications · raw-materials study · production processes · prototypes · sales strategy | 5–7 |
| Fabrication | Materials/supplies order and reception · pilot batch (300 units) | 7–8 |
| Packaging and distribution | Packaging 300 u · domestic distribution · international distribution | 8–10 |
Exploded view and bill of materials
Artistic exploded view.
Technical sheet with normalized exploded view + BOM + supplies table (original document, in Spanish).
Production flow
Production-flow tree (original document, in Spanish) — full subassembly sequence from raw inputs to finished product, with timings and operations.
Assembly sheet (example)
Every subassembly has its own sheet with description, code, quantity and step-by-step instructions:
Assembly sheet for subassembly 6 (original document, in Spanish) — cable + plates + screw, with positioning, screwing and clip-fitting instructions.
Technical appendix
Technical sheets
General views
General views of the complete product (side, front, top, bottom, rear) (original document, in Spanish). Scale 1:3, dimensions in mm. Roughly 234 × 60 × 65 mm overall.
Individual components
Coil
Views and sections of the coil (original document, in Spanish) — core of the motor.
Cut-length adjustment lever
General views of the lever (rev C) (original document, in Spanish) — regulates cut length from 1 to 3.5 mm.
Housing
Section of the main housing (original document, in Spanish) — shows internal seating for motor and head.
Head
Views of the head (original document, in Spanish) — the part that holds the blade and slides with the adjustment lever.
Results and learnings
What I learned
- Structured reverse engineering — taking apart a real commercial product and reconstructing its full production documentation forces you to understand why every part is where it is.
- Normalized technical communication — first project where I applied technical drawing with formal title blocks (document type, status, approver, scale, sheet N/Total). It became my standard for everything that followed.
- Thinking in production flow, not just product — a BOM isn't enough if you don't understand the assembly order, how many work stations you need and how long each operation takes.
- Packaging as part of the product — the "3-level packaging sheets" (unit / display / pallet) made me realize packaging design is a technical discipline with its own rules.
