> 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 t

> 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. This is why the sole EE at your hardware startup practices Digi-Key oriented design. If a part isn't available regularly and in reasonable quantities on Digi-Key, it doesn't go into the product. Your margins will be lower than ideal, but you can usually build in batches of ~1000 this way without getting totally sunk. Of course, if you're even moderately successful, you'll eventually find Chinese clones selling for half price, so you'd better have some other competitive advantage if you plan on taking this route.