On Sun, March 11, 2012 12:46 pm, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
>>How many people are there who both care about it being "right" and are
>>making
>>small enough volumes that the extra design effort is sigificant?
>
> As more than one Asian manager has said one way or another, "That costs
> another 5 cents a unit. I ship 50,000 units a month, with that kind of
> money
> I can hire another engineer" (and he probably still almost can..).

There is also the time aspect- at the beginning of the lifetime of a
product, the margins tend to be higher- if you can get your product to
market quicker, you will spend more time at higher margins and have higher
profit over the year. These get to be complex trade-offs. For public
companies, the goal is to maximize shareholder return.  Sometimes it makes
sense to hire the extra engineer, sometimes it makes sense to buy the more
expensive component, but the answer never seems to be cut-and-dried.



Matt Bennett
Just outside of Austin, TX
30.51,-97.91

The views I express are my own, not that of my employer, a large
multinational corporation that you are familiar with.
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