| >>> It's sticky being in the 'middle' - big enough where you need to use services rather than hand assembly, but small enough where you don't really have any purchasing power. The road to production has a big no man's land in the middle. Second quote of the week in one week. ;-) I make a couple of small electronic gadgets for my side business. My day job is also involved in electronic manufacturing, and I've had a good overview of what it involves. Amusing anecdote: I was restocking a critical part, and noticed that one of the _alternate_ part numbers was on end-of-life status. I panicked and bought out my supplier's entire inventory of my preferred part number. That turned out to be the world's remaining supply, and the part is now obsolete. I suppose at the end of the day, the lesson is that no matter how good you think your suppliers are about keeping you apprised of component lifetime issues, once in a while, you're going to get screwed. For being in the "middle," it's not just purchasing power, but that there are a lot of shady vendors out there. Any start-up that is headed towards that wilderness had better have an experienced buyer along. In fact, if you're still working at a day job, any experience you can get in the trenches of supply chain management will probably benefit you. It's also worth considering what your design chain looks like, because it is intertwined with your supply chain. For instance, if you're shopping your firmware work out, and your microchip goes obsolete, you'll need to have a plan for responding quickly. I've observed that sourcing issues can eat a measurable fraction of your engineering department's time and attention. At this point, I've stuffed and soldered 1000+ boards. |
Or worst. I personally experienced a sourcing issue kill eight months of engineering design work and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a simple case of being a small fish in a big pond and the suppliers not giving a shit about providing advance EOL notices. No recourse. You have to redesign your product and hope to survive.