3 ms·

> ...near zero supply chain expertise. I'd say you absolutely cannot do any manufacturing in serious commercial volumes without at least 10 engineers hired just

> ...near zero supply chain expertise. I'd say you absolutely cannot do any manufacturing in serious commercial volumes without at least 10 engineers hired just to do supply chain management full time. As a small manufacturer with less than 10 engineers total (though in industrial automation, not B2C electronics), how do "real" electronics manufacturers do supy chain management? We did a "small" run of a little machine that went from our usual quantity 1-3 units to quantity 100, and the strain it put on engineering was intense. Usually we just sent purchasing a BOM, this was something else. You have to be an engineer to comprehend the specs and requirements that engineering sends to you, you have to be in finance/management to understand tradeoffs of quality, savings in volume, and time, and you have to do grunt-work just to keep track of it all and keep communication and relationships active. The result was that design engineers were spending a ton of time on supply chain management long after the design had ended; do bigger shops have engineers who spend all day on the phone asking "where's my stuff" or surfing Alibaba?

baybal2 6y ago
> do bigger shops have engineers who spend all day on the phone asking "where's my stuff" or surfing Alibaba? Yes, lots, and lots of them. Can testify of working in an engineering team of 50 people, with close to half of engineering manpower spent on SCM. > As a small manufacturer with less than 10 engineers total (though in industrial automation, not B2C electronics), how do "real" electronics manufacturers do supy chain management? It actually becomes easier the bigger you get because you can simply buy more parts right away, in bigger batches, keep bigger inventories, and get higher part availability because suppliers themselves will be chasing after you with hopes of selling more parts. But for everybody else, it's tough life, and 50%+ of engineering resource spend, no trick around it. I think all of biggest ones like Foxconn, Flextronics, and Pigatron have their own proprietary IT systems for supply chain. Instead of running after suppliers, they force them themselve to enter their parts data into their system, and do test, and validation on their own too.

baybal2 6y ago

> do bigger shops have engineers who spend all day on the phone asking "where's my stuff" or surfing Alibaba? Yes, lots, and lots of them. Can testify of working in an engineering team of 50 people, with close to half of engineering manpower spent on SCM. > As a small manufacturer with less than 10 engineers total (though in industrial automation, not B2C electronics), how do "real" electronics manufacturers do supy chain management? It actually becomes easier the bigger you get because you can simply buy more parts right away, in bigger batches, keep bigger inventories, and get higher part availability because suppliers themselves will be chasing after you with hopes of selling more parts. But for everybody else, it's tough life, and 50%+ of engineering resource spend, no trick around it. I think all of biggest ones like Foxconn, Flextronics, and Pigatron have their own proprietary IT systems for supply chain. Instead of running after suppliers, they force them themselve to enter their parts data into their system, and do test, and validation on their own too.