I'm not OP, but (digital) hardware is probably worse, because all of the parts in the BOM have a pretty short half-life. The bar of what's possible in short run

I'm not OP, but (digital) hardware is probably worse, because all of the parts in the BOM have a pretty short half-life. The bar of what's possible in short runs, at a given price, keeps changing, so design, layout and assembly rules all keep changing underneath you. But say you had a custom hardware design - for a market. Let's say that the design has been tested with a hard prototype for design verification. what have you got? A set of files, that compile (in a factory), to an artifact that can be sold to a market for a price. How's that different from software, other than logistics, depreciation and inventory issues?