Manufacturer Concept

[ohmtech-rdi]

Background

One goal of Eurorack-blocks is to allow to make very small series at an affordable price.
Very small could be around 5 units, and ideally 1 unit.

This is a challenge though. The cost of one unit could be roughly approximated using a linear regression a + n * b where a would be a fixed fee, and b the relative cost of a unit.

An important part of a and b is labor work. When the number of unit is small, a completely dominates the total price for the units.

Improving problem definition

Labor work in a includes:

• Reviewing customer files
• Making part orders if needed
• Setting up machines for the job

Labor work in b includes:

• All parts which require manual soldering
• Testing

Therefore our goal is to:

• Get to know the entire process of a manufacturer in order to have a detail of costs to optimizes as well as their relative significance in the final price,
• Implement those optimisations.

Improving current solution

Intuitively we could:

• Minimize reviewing by automating the review process,
• Make sure parts are normally stocked by the manufacturer,
• Use SMT whenever possible,
• Ensuring produced hardware files matches as close as possible the manufacturer expectations,
• Automate testing as much as possible.

Whatever the refined problem definitions finds, it is probably safe to abstract it with a module manufacturer concept:

module Kick {
   manufacturer electro_distro
}

Together with the new style concepts, that would allow:

• To select an alternative matching part that the manufacturer is normally stocking
• To match the processes of the manufacturer:
  • To panelize gerbers,
  • To output files natively compatible with their machines:
    • G-code instead of DXF for the CNC machine
    • Already white-underprinted and imposed EPS files instead of PDF for the RIP
    • Centroid file format matching their pick-and-place machine
  • Or, to output files matching their workflows:
    • Eagle files including everything instead of gerbers, milling, printing, etc. files

Implementation

We just add the manufacturer keyword in the language. It is assumed that what is after is some sort of builtin of the language, but that we want to be able to change quickly (so don't integrate it in the keywords of the language, it is similar to a global namespace constant).

By default the manufacturer is diy, which meaning is: whatever can be reasonably expected from the user to produce their units themselves. diy is the current implementation.