I have worked in situations with third party contract manufacturing and it can be difficult to keep it all co-ordinated.
Basically a simple thing like the PCB manufacturer having a run of printed circuit boards (pcb's) get burnt in the electroplating line, lead to having to wait for a delivery of extra substrate material from their supplier, which needed to come from overseas, as it was not in the purchasing forecast.
This led to the pcb's being late to the component population company who having needed to keep their people busy had reallocated some of the components to other projects causing another supply problem which pushed the boards into a holiday period causing more delays.
Then with a faulty batch of IC's caused further delays, as the boards were tested and the component stripped re-ordered and replaced by hand and having to go back through the cleaning baths retested, the onboard ROM re-flashed.
Time ticks away and days turn into weeks, weeks into months.
It's intriguing as you watch the snowball effect in hindsight but stress full at the time.
Needless to say no one had happy faces on, and the end product was very late. All caused by JIT (just in time) manufacturing which is used to keep inventories at a minimum for all parties involved.
Hundreds of different components, scores of component suppliers and several contract manufacturers make for a tense production schedule.
So hopefully as you say a slightly larger inventory may be the answer. However this means we may need to pay for some storage somewhere rather than shipping directly from the contract manufacturers, so be it, this will probably be the next step as production increases any way.
A pick and dispatch distribution center, plenty of them around, add another layer to the complexity.
Good luck and Kindest regards to all
TZL Price at posting:
33.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
