3 ms·
Cents is a lot of money in manufacturing. When I made consumer electronics our production team would swap parts based on cost. 1c on a million units is $10,000
by andyjpb 6y ago
Cents is a lot of money in manufacturing.
When I made consumer electronics our production team would swap parts based on cost. 1c on a million units is $10,000. They only had to save a few cents a year each to easily pay for themselves.
The rest was margin for the business.
Saving cents on a $80 BOM (bill of materials) may not sound like much but it really does add up when you're doing volume manufacturing.
- andyjpb 6y agoOn the other hand, manufacturing has the general attitude that "software is free" because the incremental cost in production to make a copy is zero. Once, the production team swapped a component as part of a running change and it took a programmer nearly a month to write the new driver. I think we still came out ahead in the end but there was some worry along the way as it wasn't clear how long it was going to take.
- leeter 6y agoExactly this, you can even look at the old consoles and see the same thing. They were built to a VERY specific margin and tuned for the same. There is as best I can tell no fat in any of the systems shipped except newer consoles and the original xbox. The only reason I'd say there is 'fat' in newer consoles is because they have much wider requirements than old ones do.