Forrest W. Christian wrote:
>> Forrest, have you considered outsourcing your boards to a contract
>> manufacturer? Depending on the complexity of the board, it may be more
>> economical -- even for a small run.
>>
> If you mean assembly, yes I've considered it.   At around Qty 50/month
> it's a lot cheaper to do this in-house.   A typical board with 50
> placements will cost me around $5 to have built.  50 boards would be
> $250.  An employee here can screen and populate around 50 boards in 3
> hours, which at $10/hr is $30.

Yeah, these are relatively simple boards. Do you hand-solder them in-house? 
Are they PTH?

> The manual cost to place with my own employee can be calculated as 
> follows:
>
> Labor cost is roughly 0.003/second. ($10/hr,  16.666.../minute,
> 0.003/second). Even if you figure 5 seconds a placement, the cost is
> only about 1.5cents/placement.   Heck, even if we could only place one
> every 30 seconds (even I can do this well), we'd still be in the same
> ballpark.

Mmm... that doesn't really make sense to me. The relationship is linear, 
unless you have a huge fixed overhead.

>>If the board has enough complexity, and especially if it's mostly
>>through-hole, China is the way to go if you want "dirt cheap." Contact me 
>>off-line, if you need help finding a reliable source.
>>
>>
> I'll probably shoot you an email since I would be interested in
> outsourcing this, but I just can't figure out how at my volumes it makes
> any sense at all.

A lot depends on your market. If the potential market is big, and the demand 
is elastic, it makes sense to produce larger quantities, but charge less per 
unit so you can sell more. Keep in mind that your goal should be to maximize 
your _total_ profit, so it doesn't matter how much profit you make on each 
unit (many people forget this).

I've found that 1000 boards is usually the magic number, at which point it 
becomes a no-brainer for almost any size board. Sometimes you can save 
enough money to make it worth your while to place an order just once a year, 
instead of building the boards on a JIT basis.

Vitaliy 

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