Maybe I misunderstood you there but I'll try it anyway:
I don't think it would be doable to start a second place building boards. Where would the money for such a order come from? And what if BOTH companies finish boards? It would be double the payment...
Also, I seem to recall ED saying he would consider switching the board company only if they won't work as planned and promised. Which they did.
That's easy - you split up the work. It's a trial - you get both to do a couple thousand, and pick the one who was nicest, fastest, cheapest (hopefully not), or whatever your preference is. If one is really slow, you have the other company's work to tide you over, and start shipping, and know who to pick. If both are fast, you're done quickly, and if both are slow, you're not too worse off than before, but you have better odds of starting up quickly with *one* of the companies, after whatever delays are over.
And no, ED was definitely in talks with the alternative company, because he said it would take several months to get all the details ironed out and everything set up (don't have time to find that quote right now, perhaps someone else will help out). Waiting until you've given up on the first company is suicide, because you've just added another two month delay after you've decided to give up (which takes a while), which is still more time without Pandoras in the hands of customers. If you need to hedge your bet, what better way than spreading out the risk?
Well, tell me where the parts should be delivered right now.
If CC continues with the production like they did the last two weeks, there's no need to switch the company. Never change a running system.
If there will be more problems, we'll have to switch the company and the parts are needed there.
Shipping that massive amount of parts incl. custom payments, etc. is about 20.000 USD at least. Moving them to a new production site would mean the same costs again.
Do you want to cover those?
The parts have been ordered, are reserved and will be delivered when needed. That's the only thing that makes sense.
Well, I still maintain that CC has messed you around enough enough that you should at least be looking elsewhere, for comparison. Send 1-2000 sets of parts over to the new place, and have them make a go at it. It's a trial, no need to over commit. Best case? They're a lot faster, more reliable, and with this knowledge you can switch over ASAP. You use the boards they made for the remainder of batch 1. Worst case? They're about the same or slower (hard to believe right now), and you use them for the end of batch 2. I suppose if you're going to be dead-set on not switching until you're 100% certain CC is *always* going to give you the run-around, not keeping the parts in a holding pattern is the best bet. But then again, you might as well just ship them to CC, since it seems you'll always have doubts.
Well, CC didn't do anything for a while, that's the reason we wanted to switch.
If they work reliable now, there's no need to switch.
Producing in two places at once is a nice thing, but it costs more money as well.
It also is a much better guarantee that parts will actually get done, and makes both companies work that much harder to compete and not lose your business. Otherwise, CC just gets complacent. I still think that past evidence, especially with no explanation (or was there one??) has been pretty unreliable. And the comparison - *any* comparison - gives you a much needed reference point.
You also said as much,
once. (See the last block) "We're rather prepared to have them ready for a production in Taiwan in case they are faster than the company in Texas with production."
I said they would be green-lighted when I see that CC is really working reliable.
Nothing has happened yet on the TV Cables, so what should I update? There's no missing transparency, but nothing has happened yet.
I'm stuffed with work right now and want to see at least ONE more big shipment from CC to see they REALLY are working now and that this wasn't just a quick peak.
Your
words "As soon as I see the next big shipment from CC (at least 500 boards), I'm going to place the order and should get them 4 - 6 weeks later." We've now seen more than 500 boards shipped, because Craig's built 550. At least I now know what you're waiting for. Thanks for the update.
I can't remember that anyone said we want to find a replacement for the case company, sorry.
I know we said once we can afford it, we'll move the case production probably to UK, the same company that does the iCP cases. But that's it.
It was partly that, and partly the fact that the Chinese company was jerking you around and missing deadlines, not sending pictures as requested, and wouldn't respond to email/calls (sound familiar?). You wanted to dump them as soon as they were done with this run of cases, and were working on a replacement:
(Craig's twitter)
Going to visit a factory in Scotland next month to see if we can bring more of the Pandora production to the UK.
Sat Mar 20 2010 22:10:19 (Eastern Daylight Time) via web
I can't find the exact quotes right now, but I know you were very unhappy with the turnaround times and lack of communication from the company. And now, recently, you've said you have no problem with them, and will continue to use them. My, how memory can dull the pain.
If CC learned from that fiasco and is producing boards as they should in good quality in speed, I'm fine with that.
TI is talking with CC two times a week to push them.
And what did they learn from the fiasco? Have they made any promises to act differently in the future? What was their response/explanation? Send me a PM if you don't want it posted publicly - I guarantee I won't post or forward it to anyone else. But your lack of response to the question is a pretty big red flag to me - it says that they *didn't* give an answer (or at least not a half-decent one). And that disturbs me even more.
We did stop looking for alternatives months ago, since we already have an alternative and they could start Pandora production within 3 weeks.
Sure; you had an alternative, so you stopped looking for other alternatives. But now it sounds like you stopped the initial planning with the replacement board company and I still can't understand why. You said it would take several months to set up production with them, and now it's down to a few weeks. Why are we stopping after that work?
CC can only create a revised schedule when they really have ALL the parts needed the production - and they just got the remaining nubs two days ago and are working on a new schedule now.
How could they create a schedule when they didn't know when they have all the parts needed?
They have all the parts, except the nubs. So they can make all the boards, minus soldering the nubs, which are separate, anyway. They can very easily make a schedule that has two estimates, conditional on when they receive the nubs. If they get nubs before <DATE1>, all boards will be ready on <DATE2>. If they get the nubs later than <DATE1> they will have been working on the boards in the interim, so those should be still done by <DATE2> (or earlier), and then everything will be ready <DELTA> days after the nubs are received. Season to taste. It's the kind of schedule we should have gotten from them back in August, when the nubs were pending.
Completely agree. There were issues with production delay, they were explained, discussions occurred, problems are sorted. These are all normal parts of a company life. It looks like they're doing a good job now, why would you change?
Completely disagree. Telling us they've made the boards when they haven't is not part of normal company life. And while we surmised about why they might have done this, I'm still waiting to hear an official reply from either OPT or CC as to the real reason it happened. I reserve (some) of my judgement until after I hear, but the longer it takes, the worse my judgement (without the information) becomes.
We (the vast majority of users here) continue to support OpenPandora and you ED, as well as we trust your choices. Don't let despair sneak in, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer and closer
I second supporting OPT. I support many of their choices, but when I question some, it's because I think they have an opportunity (chance? obligation?) to be even better, and not spend so much time circling the drain.
