[ska]

It's pretty easy to make the hassle worthwhile, if you are selling (particularly many) millions of things. Even saving a dime on BOM for a million units shipped will pay an engineer year, roughly.

I still remember a friend relating with a mixture of horror and fondness that in 15 years probably the biggest impact he ever had to the bottom line of [big computer manufacturer no longer in existence] was re-routing a PCB in a way that let them make it smaller with no functional change. The materials cost savings over product lifetime was in the 7-8 figures range, he claimed.

[pkaye]

A product I was working on had different variants based on what parts are populated. There were config resistors to help route the signals based on what was populated. I replaced that all with a simple software lookup table in firmware to reroute the signals correctly. Furthermore I figured out how to auto-detect the dozens of supported configurations on first bootup. The PCBs were very small so I made the board designers job a lot easier due to eliminated resistors. The factory folks were thrilled that they didn't have to manage the jumpers.

[sitkack]

I would hire you. These techniques should be applied pervasively.

Could you write a guide? I would buy it.

[pkaye]

Thanks for the kind praises. Unfortunately I'm not much of a writer though I have lots of interesting experiences that I tell my friends and coworkers.

A big part of how I'm today is due to my boss at that time. One of the most brilliant engineers I worked it. He also gave us a lot of time and freedom to think of these kind of approaches. Sadly these days a lot of companies are always in a rush so one can't think things through properly.