[sam]

>What do you guys think of having the component manufacturer source the parts?

I'm assuming you're asking about having the contract manufacturer source the parts, right? This is typically called "turnkey" contract manufacturing as opposed to "consignment" where you source the parts yourself. It really depends on the kind of product you're building and your ability to negotiate with component distributors an manufacturers. If it's your first time around and you're optimizing for speed, turnkey is probably the way to go. If you need specialty parts and you know how to source them more effectively than your CM, then consignment may make more sense.

[DanBC]

When I was involved in sub-contract engineering (more than 10 years ago) our firm had a weird setup. If we sourced the parts we'd charge a 10% fee. The customer avoided that fee if they provided the parts.

It's weird because when we buy off our BOMs from our regular suppliers we'd get well packed components that were easy to goods-in inspect and put to kit. If we needed 250 surface mount resistors we knew we either had a reel, or we would buy a reel because we'd probably use them.

But when the customers supplied stuff it'd come in horrible little bits and bobs. You'd get a strip of exactly 250 SM resistors. (Which is horrible for the P&P machine we were using, and resistors get dropped by the machine a lot). To us it should have been the other way round - "Supply the kit yourself? We charge you 10% (of something) because we still have to goods in inspect it and kit it and etc".

Most manufacturers are happy to do a mix. So, if your product uses one weird IC and you happen to have stock of it, but nothing else, feel free to tell them that you're supplying that part.