To quote Don, that (polite expletive deleted) spreadsheet was very likely well intentioned. However...
Most people deserve to understand 3 of what I call "pseudo statistics." (1) Murphy's Law (anything that *can* go wrong probably will) (2) O'Reilly's Rule - Murphy was an optimist! (3) The rules of unintended consequences - unfortunately far more real than either of the first two. What's going on with the KX3 most likely also went on with the K3 - we didn't know that much about it and the wizards at Elecraft had no need to "share" it with us. In my working life, I worked pretty much "behind the scenes" and dealt very little with the public - probably a good thing. The way I would have handled the current situation would have been far less diplomatic than what I've seen from both Wayne and Eric. It'll be here when it gets here! Art - N4PJ On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Lew K7GO <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > ______________________________________________________________ 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
