FW: RE: Re: Re: [AMPS] HV Pole Pigs ++

Steve Katz stevek@jmr.com
Wed, 19 Dec 2001 13:22:16 -0800



I agree.  (below)

> >Hear, hear.  I'm in the contract manufacturing
> >business, and we turn away lots of potential business because we don't
> >provide a free prototype 
> 
> It's one thing for electronic manufacturers to provide free samples of
> 50-cent ICs to prospective users -- it's usually cheaper to give them away
> than to bill and pay for them, on both sides of the transaction.
> Mini-Circuits is the only company I can think of that doesn't sample
> liberally and nobody minds -- because it's EASY do buy direct from them in
> any quantity.
> 
> It's a completely different thing to expect an engineering firm to develop
> AND build a prototype "on spec" -- without any guarantee of an order, or
> any idea what the size of the order might be.  
> 
> I wouldn't ever do prototyping for free either.  But if I had a reasonably
> firm business plan with predictable future orders, I would ALWAYS share
> enough information with a potential supplier from whom I needed a
> prototype, so that they could "run the numbers" and see whether the cost
> of developing a prototype could be reasonably folded into future
> production.  That's something the supplier has to know before committing
> to a prototype or a manufacturing run.
> 
> There's more to business than just finding the cheapest price.  Case in
> point?  Alpha's attempt to move its manufacturing to Eastern Europe.  Only
> problem was -- nobody bothered to tell the factory that the amplifiers
> actually had to WORK.
> 
> Jim N6OTQ
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://mail2web.com/ .

--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/amps
Submissions:              amps@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  amps-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-amps@contesting.com