Re: Future: 0603 versus 0402 parts

On 31 Mar 2007 22:31:26 -0700, "Frank Raffaeli"
<SNIPrf_man_frTHIS@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 1, 12:11 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 31 Mar 2007 15:23:31 -0700, "Frank Raffaeli"



<SNIPrf_man_frT...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 31, 4:22 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:49:31 -0500, Carl@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:23:17 -0700, MassiveProng
<MassivePr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:45:26 -0500, Carl@xxxxxxxxxxxx Gave us:

Finally, how would you compare the resource cost per board in time,
money and quality compared to having an assembly house build the
boards for you?

Contract manufacturing is ALWAYS a cheaper route in America these
days. Especially in SoCal where SDGE gouges the piss out of the user
of every kW/h used, particularly commercial customers.

Yes, that is true in straight dollar terms. But the issue that has us
thinking is latency, how long it takes to get a small production run
finished. Sometimes we can't get a batch scheduled for several weeks,
which can lead to problems.

Depends on your products. For high-volume, low-margin standard
products, it does make sense to build them offshore. High-value, small
volume, very complex products need more control.

John

We designed and built 140,000 satellite radio active antennas (Sirius
and XM) in the U.S. After investing in automation, it was cheaper than
Mexico. Too bad there is a mind set of assembly being cheaper
overseas. It's tough to compete, though. IMO the important thing is
where to buy the parts.

Frank

We're a little different. We run, overall, about 22% parts cost. Some
of our products sell for 10 or in one case 20x parts cost. So both
parts and assembly cost are sort of down in the noise.

It's like Microsoft charging you $2000 for a CD; the CD is just the
medium for transferring intellectual property. I just wish I had their
volume!

John

The main thing we had to do to compete on price for the SDARS LNA's
was changing the circuit to include the filter on the PCB. Second was
to design out the stage 2 amp and replace with cheap Infineon
transistor. Third was to streamline test. Not trivial to test noise
figure +/- 0.1 dB in a few seconds.

What's the other 78%, test? Include packaging in the components cost?
Do you include design amortization in the COGS? Support?

The 22% is parts cost over total revenue. About 50% is salaries and
benefits for employees. Some goes to outside assemblers, rent,
utilities, legal and accounting fees, supplies, maintanance,
depreciation on equipment, all that stuff. And taxes, of course, The
numbers are about the same as running a restaurant, where maybe 25% of
the cost is for the raw food.

I imagine software in the perfect world would be like Boreland Object
Vision circa ~1991: This software worked when I installed it (Win
3.1), when I upgraded to Win'95, '98, and 2000. Haven't tried it w/ XP
or Vista.

I'm still running a bunch of old DOS apps that work just fine. I still
write PowerBasic DOS programs and run them under XP.

John

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