For what it's worth, here's my take on the K3 delays.
Elecraft is a company that sells kits, not finished products.
Virtually all the labor to build the product is supplied by the
customer, not Elecraft. This was their business model, and it was
hugely successful, because they offered well designed products,
excellent instructions, and great support.
With the K3, Elecraft changed its business model from a supplier of
kits to a supplier of a finished product (either entirely finished by
Elecraft or 90% finished by Elecraft with the rest done by the
customer). This change in business model required that Elecraft
not the customer - supply all or nearly all the labor the get the
product built.
There were two ways to go: hire people inside or go outside. It
appears that Elecraft chose to remain small and go outside, hiring
contractors. Once Elecraft did that, it lost control over the timing
and results.
Further, Elecraft, as a kit company, didn't have experience dealing
with contractors supplying labor, which in my experience require
constant monitoring to avoid surprises and problems. As with all
humans, it is common for contractors to not acknowledge problems, but
rather to hope things will work out somehow. From the updates posted
by Elecraft it appears that most of the problems have arisen with
custom parts (such as toroids) from contractors, and with assembly
mistakes by outside board stuffers.
Compounding the problem, Elecraft is a very small company (in
quantity of business) relative to other companies that do business
with the contractors. So, when a contractor's scheduling is tight
and a choice has to be made, Elecraft drops to the bottom of the list
and the bigger customer gets priority. Also, it sounds like Elecraft
didn't second source its suppliers to allow for a parachute if the
prime supplier didn't come through.
It's not easy to get a finished product in stable production that's
an entirely different animal from acquiring parts for a kit and
letting the customer supply all the labor to produce the finished
product and Elecraft is learning as it goes. As Shakespeare put
it, "Many a slip `twixt the cup and lip." Elecraft greatly
underestimated the difficulty of this process, and because of its
inexperience didn't accurately predict the time required.
Elecraft built up a lot of goodwill with its kit business and it's
riding that to keep things in check with the K3 delays. That's not
an inexhaustible supply, however.
I'm hopeful this situation will have a happy outcome though
obviously very belated for all concerned, especially since I'm on
the K3 wait list myself. And Elecraft has probably learned a lot
from this experience so that future product releases will be handled
very differently.
Les WB6MND
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Toby Deinhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I reckon 99.9% would have thought much more highly of Elecraft
> > for a sincere statement like that than the multiple
> > irregular postings advising of further delays.
>
> Overly optimistic maybe, unsincere no.
>
> I can understand the frustation and I feel it too; I had hoped to
> christen my K3 first in the IARU Region 1 FD SSB, then after delays
in
> the WAE SSB, still later in the WAG & CQWW DX/SSB contests both
from 4O.
> But I also understand that it is very, very difficult to put a time
line
> on this kind of stuff. I have this problem at work with software
> development all the time.
>
> Nevertheless, I feel that Elecraft should take their time, get it
right
> and not cut any corners for the sake of speed.
>
> vy 73 de toby
>
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