We've been having trouble with our current Taiwanese
board partner. We found out that they've been padding
up the parts costs with their suppliers. I won't name
names yet. We're still dependent on them. We  are now
lookin for a more honest partner who can be trusted
and can expect trustworthy behavior from us too.

We're planning to move to a new design and
architecture for our productline. The board we're
designing is a typical embedded board. IE: mainboard
with cpu, ram, flash and IO. We've picked the geode as
the core system processor and we'd have serial ports
to interface with various daughterboards that have
PICs and sensors of various types. I'd guess our
mainboard design will likely be a 5-7 layer 3.5"x5"
PCB with a limited number of BGA components and then a
mix of SMT and throughhole parts. 

We've got a team of low level software and digital
design hardware guys. Our hardware guys are confident
that they can handle all the schematic design and
capture themselves. The work they're uncertain about
is the board layout work. Given that, we're looking
for a manufacturing and assembly partner who would be
willing to consult with us on the layout and help us
out for a fee if we run into trouble. The type of
business we want is that when we do a design, we'd pay
a downpayment and preorder a specified number of
boards. In return, we'd expect the partner to take on
handling of inventory and manufacturing details.

I was hoping that some of you may have gone through
this type of process. I'd really like to get advice
from people who used particular vendors. Suggestions
and recommendations would be great. 

Thanks!


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