We are NOT changing to a new company midway of batch 1!
Of course your're considering it, you said so right here:
The company in Taiwan is still working on setting everything up properly, and I might already assembly my units there (still thinking about that), even if the boards are being produced in Texas currently.
That should speed things up a bit
Even if you really meant the board company, I still would strongly caution at changing something like this still in batch one. There will be additional unforseen delays, because of shipping (will the assembler send things to customers, or to you, to repackage and forward along with adapters/batteries/cables?), and because they have to iron out initial production/quality control issues. And, of course, they'll need to send some samples back to you guys to verify everything's OK. Think of the time this will add.
You say you'll fly out there to oversee the initial production, but I have to voice some skepticism. You said that for the cases, it didn't happen. You said it for the boards, it didn't happen, either. What's different, here? The cost to fly out two people (plus your time) is not insignificant.
We're looking for alternatives to make production more stable and while the current company is (hopefully) producing the boards, the new one is working on setting up a board production line, as this takes months.
The new company also has a professional assembly line. They would offer us a complete package (production, testing, assembly).
They also offered us to help with the assembly of the remaining units, as it will take a while to assemble them.
If about 100 - 200 units per day are assembled, assembling 3000 units takes a month. They've got 280 employees, so they could assemble 3000 units WAY faster.
You've repeatedly told us that once all the cases are prepared in the UK -- easy to do, since there's lots of spare time with no boards to put in, you've said this will be done several times -- once these are all prepared, you can complete assembly of ~200 Pandoras a day. That's a week do do each batch of 1000, which will be fine, because there's more than a week between each set of 1000 boards being shipped from Texas. Where's the time saved? Later batches, sure, but I just don't understand the benefit here. Not to mention Craig's "We'll never build/assemble in China" <that's where the cases are made> "Sure, it was the right choice" <They take too long> "Lesson learned, we won't do that again, and at least we can still say 'Made in UK', since that's where we're assembling" ... <Now we're going to assemble there, too??>
I'm more concerned about the current board company being able to produce the rest of the boards quickly than I am with cases I know that can ship within 5 days...
How can cases that can ship within 5 days delay any production when we still don't have the boards?
Really? You're going to ask that, now? I'll list a few ways:
They're not actually ready (read: the case company lied ... again).
They still need some work (painted, whatever ... see above).
It's holiday season, so it's harder to get our stuff out, since everyone else is more important (
Moon Festival, anyone?)
Because by the time it's time to ship, it will be Chinese new year (
Again for the
third time.)
Because you found some problem with the current 1000, and the mould needs to be changed, shoulder buttons were sticky, whatever.
Your truck breaks down (can't get them from the airport).
Volcano
Somali Pirates (... Bueller?)
Or, of course, just because the case company is super-slow and everything else they've ever promised took longer than expected? I bet that 5 days doesn't include the travel time. You said the same thing about the boards, while we were waiting for the cases to be built. And look what happened, now.
We've got the cases for the next 2000 units ready to be assembled in UK - and it will take at least 3 weeks to get the boards for them, I assume.
If that's the truly case, then you have virtually no hope of sending any significant number of Pandoras off to arrive before Christmas. That's rather unfortunate, for all involved.
Edit: Added the below, since I hadn't seen it when I started.
I know. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to simply switch to another company. A board this complex needs a lot of setting up, testing, etc.
We started working with a second company a while ago and they'll probably be ready January / February to also start production.
It's a race against the time, but no one can help us here.
Same thing for the QA of the assembly. LCD cables are finicky, don't-cha-know. As commented above.
It's unfortunate that both companies in US seem to be worse than Chinese companies... and we decided to work with US companies as we expected them to do better work.
Which was the other one, the nub company? You were just touting how wonderful they were a couple of weeks ago. And the Case company dragged their heels for months on end ... twice... and you wanted (perhaps still) to switch away from them. I think none of them have been any good.
Well, if the Pandora is going to kill me, then I'm ready for this. Until then, I'll try to support all you guys and keep going.
You should change your name to Energizer Dragon.
Seriously, though, you do need more rest.
It wasn't really a rant. I can fully understand you.
I can understand everyone that is sad, etc. because of all the delays.
It's way worse for us though - the delays surely were NOT our intentions... but I can understand every single one that is pissed off.
And I (hopefully most of us) recognize that none of this was your desire. But there's been some severe mismanagement of some of these goings-on, and it's not entirely all the fault of the other suppliers. (Nor is it all OPT's fault.) But there's clearly some pretty poor miscommunication around - I'm still pretty confused how your wires got crossed and the remaining cases are still in China - did Fatih just not see any of the multiple posts/blog entries/comments about them having been shipped? Did looking for a new assembly company in Taiwan honestly not come up until now? I find that flabbergasting.
