Yea I've spent tons of time in China, and worked with a number of these ODM type companies and smaller factories, and the kinds of things they can get done in s

Yea I've spent tons of time in China, and worked with a number of these ODM type companies and smaller factories, and the kinds of things they can get done in short times for small amounts of money is pretty amazing.. Basically why its so hard not to manufacture in china is because of the "factory engineering plus" kind of model. Basically you get low cost engineering work done by the factory to modify your plastic tool, tweak your PCB design, build test fixtures, setup test station software, etc.. Basically one person who knows what they are doing can essentially give a detailed list of instructions to a factory in china and they will just "make it happen" for a really good price.. Since there are so few factories in the US anymore, there are no engineers that work for the factories, so there are very few companies that offer engineering work for low cost, whereas in China the actual factory work pays for the salaries of the engineers. So, its hard to compete with that..