I'm a bit baffled by the delay. If the parts are indeed available I would expect that Elecraft would be punching out boards/units a hundred at a time by now. My (perhaps incorrect) impression was that that the KX3 was primarily composed of surface mount boards populated by pick-and-place robots and then wave soldered. I would expect that the ATU boards are more effort to assemble due to the toroids, relays and what not. Updating firmware is straightforward and based on the fact that units are actually shipping I have to believe the firmware is in reasonably good shape.
While I realize that the spreadsheet is a less than random statistical sample, I expected to see more evidence of a traditional manufacturing "hockey-stick ramp" by now. Further, it is not at all clear to me that Elecraft will make more money shipping built units versus kits in the near term given the order backlog. If it takes 15 minutes to get a kit ready to ship versus an hour to build and test a unit then there will be four times as much volume at .9 revenue ($900/$1000) per unit in the kit. The ratio will almost always be better than .9 since most of us order upgrades and accessories. Obviously I'm making these productivity numbers up for illustration purposes. The point remains that given the current backlog the kits *could* bring more total profit to Elecraft in the near term. -- View this message in context: http://elecraft.365791.n2.nabble.com/Kit-Shipping-Schedule-Theory-tp7509170p7518287.html Sent from the Elecraft mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
