Dear Hugh, Many thanks for another nice post from the good old times. Was a nice morning reading.
I didn't know that the 5061B was rebuilt with removing odd parts in mind, but it makes sense. Interesting system with Code 1 to Code 4. Cheers, Magnus On 12/29/18 5:36 AM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote: > My “Test and Measurement” days with HP, from 1984 to 1992, were all in > manufacturing (a.k.a. production) engineering. A major task was dealing > with the endless list of obsoleted components, since many of our products had > designs dating back 10 or 20 years, into the wild west early days of > semiconductors and integrated circuits. > > In addition to Frequency and Time products (which we called “PFS” – Precision > Frequency Sources), HP’s Santa Clara Division (SCD) also had the frequency > counter product line. I managed the production engineering team for counters > from 1988 to 1992; the job that I had to pass the R&D engineering new hire > interview to qualify for. This technology was invented in the 1950s and > even with many new models and upgrades, we still were shipping “classics” > products from the early 1970s in low volume in about 1990. The 5340 microwave > counter and 5328 universal counters come to mind. We kept raising the > prices, because we had newer, better, cheaper counters for sale. But the > old ones kept selling because they were designed into some DOD test system, > and the hassle of designing in a new instrument was more expensive than > buying an new (but obsolete) counter for our customers. The parade of > obsolete components seemed to never end on these old units. I recall > talking to the marketing manager, Murli Thurmali (sp?) about obsoleting some > of these products, and he would wisely respond: “Tell me how you are going > to replace the million dollars of lost revenue.” The manufacturing manager, > Chuck Taubman, would likewise say: “Our margins are well over 50% on these > products, that money pays overhead, which is our salaries. Show me $500K in > cost savings before we obsolete them.” Turns out that even though they were > a hassle, it was relatively easy money, so we kept building and selling them. > > The PFS products were similar in this regard. The product line had largely > been developed in the 1960s and 1970s, volumes were low, but prices and > margins were high. Yeah, they took some effort to keep in production, but > the development was done, and it was good money. HP was a business after > all, and if we didn’t make money, we didn’t have jobs. The was a great > education for me, brand new to management, learning that HP may be a cool > technology company, but we only had jobs as long as the business was > profitable, and preferably growing. Nothing was guaranteed. > > HP instituted a system of “Codes” for parts, to measure how well we were > designing our products for long production lives and low materials management > overhead costs. Code 1 was best. Industry standard parts available from > many sources cheaply. Code 2 were OK to use. Code 3 was something really > special, and needed a good reason to include. Code 4 brought the scorn of > procurement engineers, and brought significant management review. > > The easy way out for production engineering to deal with obsoleted component > was a life time buy. The Materials group hated this, because they had > hundreds of other parts already on life time buys. What if they get lost or > damaged, or the last batch was defective, or the product lasted longer than > we expected? A product like the 5061A, at ~200 build per year, was a > typical challenge. 10 more years of life? Buy 2400 parts? Perhaps > double it to 5000 parts. The response from component buyers was easy to > predict: “But VendorX wants $2.31 for this ancient transistor. We’re not > tying up $10K in one part. We have dozens of parts like this, we can’t > afford all this inventory.” So we would try harder. Maybe a 2N222A, or a > 2N3904 will work. Procurements loves these parts. We’d try them out, and > hope we didn’t miss something in the qualification. New parts never had the > same specs at the old parts, and the original designer was long gone, and > design intent documentation non-existent. I bet half the time the old > transistor just happened to be on the engineers bench back in 1969, worked > fine, and he just used it. The Code 1,2,3,4 process was designed to > discourage this kind of design thinking. > > When we upgraded the 5061A Cesium Standard to the 5061B in 1984-85, the > primary objective was to eliminate all the code 3 and code 4 parts. > Designing out all the old stuff wound up being a fantastic education in > component technologies, reading and interpreting data sheets, dealing with > vendors, worrying about inventory control and so on. Our attitude was > trying to make a product we could ship indefinitely, even though it was > already over 20 years old. We had a history of selling PFS instruments for > decades, and we were preparing for decades more. > > Bob kb8tq wrote: “In the case of the 5071, I’d bet a pretty good brand of > six pack that nobody on the planet would have guessed 20 years ago that it > still would be in production today.” > > Well, I can’t prove that Bob would lose this bet (Maybe Rick K could), and I > didn’t work on the 5071. But for PFS products, in production engineering, we > had been building and selling these instruments for decades, with no end in > sight. Volumes were low, so they didn’t get redesigned very often. I’ll > bet the same six pack that the 5071 team felt it would be a VERY long time > before HP designed a replacement for the 5071. > > Rick – any memories you can share? > > Happy New Year, > > Hugh Rice > > > From: time-nuts <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bob kb8tq > Sent: Monday, December 24, 2018 9:35 AM > To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement > <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP Cesium Standards in the International Atomic Time > Scale, the legend of Felix Lazarus, and the "top cover > > Hi > > Indeed back at Motorola, a lot of that stuff got transferred into the > engineering stock room > after a while. Just how that worked out budget wise …. one wonders …. > > Bob > >> On Dec 24, 2018, at 11:53 AM, jimlux >> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> On 12/24/18 5:36 AM, Bob kb8tq wrote: >>> Hi >>> The gotcha is - if you have a very unique part in a device and it goes >>> away, how >>> many years of stock do you buy on the “last chance” order? >>> In the case of the 5071, I’d bet a pretty good brand of six pack that >>> nobody on the >>> planet would have guessed 20 years ago that it still would be in production >>> today. >> >> EOL buys for a product line are plausible. But if you're building one-off >> (or limited quantity)- maybe not. At work (JPL) there's a whole aspect to >> sparing that's kind of subtle - you get funded per mission, and it has a >> cost cap at the proposal stage. >> >> Buying extra parts "just because" cuts into your budget - what do you give >> up because you bought extra parts, maybe some engineering hours? or test >> time? - it's easy to say "oh what's a few parts here and there", but pretty >> soon, it's getting to be a big part of your budget. >> >> So you buy enough parts to build what you're going to launch, plus enough >> maybe for an EM or breadboard, and then a few spares in case there's some >> assembly errors, or you need to scrap a board. If the problem happens early >> enough, you've got time to burn some reserves and order more. >> >> The other problem in the space business is that there is a lot of desire to >> re-use known good designs. That part may have been a long way from EOL when >> it was first used, but now, 5-10 years later, maybe it's EOL, and there's no >> obvious "drop in" replacement. Do you redesign, or do you buy the last >> remaining stock and hope for the best? >> >> This tends to be a cascading issue - mission A designs and uses part X, and >> has spares. Smaller Mission B uses the spares to build their widget using >> the Mission A design. They buy a few spares too. Smaller Mission C does the >> same thing. Now we're 10 years in, in some cases still using spare parts >> bought by original Mission A. >> >> I am still using spare connectors and such from Cassini (launched in 1997) >> in things like breadboards at work. >> >> >> >>>> On Dec 24, 2018, at 1:59 AM, Hal Murray >>>> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> said: >>>>> and the "market lifetime" of parts today is much shorter. There are lots >>>>> of >>>>> parts from Hittite that were essentially "run on this line only", and when >>>>> they moved geometries, they're never to be seen again. >>>> >>>> Most vendors make a lot of noise before they pull the plug on a part. The >>>> usual deal is that they fill all orders placed by a specified date - >>>> lifetime >>>> buy. Distributors typically send a note to anybody who has purchased them, >>>> or >>>> maybe only purchased significant quantities. >>>> >>>> If a part isn't expensive, you can afford to buy extras beyond what you >>>> expect >>>> to need to cover some what-ifs. That probably doesn't cover something like >>>> the 5071 being in production for 30 years. But it could give you a few >>>> years >>>> warning - maybe enough time to find a substitute and/or redesign that >>>> section. >>>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> time-nuts mailing list -- >> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> >> To unsubscribe, go to >> http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com<http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com> >> and follow the instructions there. > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- > [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> > To unsubscribe, go to > http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com<http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com> > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to > http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
