Having been through a few of these endeavors, I'll tell you what we found.
We had 2-3 people we did nothing but build proto's and do engineering mods.
Some days these people had nothign to do, but when we needed them they were
worth their weight in gold. By having them engineering could get smal
quantities built quickly and evaluate changes quickly.
When these people blessed of the design, we outsouced it. When we had to
rework boards due to a changes or fix subcontactor defects, they did it
quickly and to our quality standards. Large amounts of updates or changes
were routed to our customer repair/upgrade department which had
rework/upgrade staff in larger quantity.

These people made the engineers life easier and at the same time made sure
the manufacturing documentation was adequate before we sent it out of house.
You have to be at home with the thoguht that at times they had little to do.
If you tried to load them up they could no longer react to the quick and
nasty enviorment engineering often has to works in.

Jim Gleason


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Crepeau, Phil
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 11:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] More on outsourcing...


hi,

although i think the original question had to do with why a company would
want to outsource pwb fab and assembly from an outsource vendors point of
view, i'd like to make a few points about this process from the point of
view of the outsourcer.

1.  don't think you will save money, nor make the vendor happy, if your
design isn't mature.  it really causes problems when your vendor is notified
that a half built assembly needs to be taken off line.
2.  if the board or assembly you receive doesn't meet the drawing, make sure
you have people around that can rework or repair them.  chances are you
aren't going to return them to the vendor to do this, because it is time
consuming and expensive.
3.  make sure you have people around that can incorporate design changes
that are made after the board comes in from the vendor, because you probably
won't find anybody else to do it.

in other words, keep the capability to do prototype quantities of assmblies.
farm the job out after everything is working to your satisfaction.  your
outsource vendor should probably  be involved at this level so they can get
their licks in.

phil

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