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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------