[Elecraft] Kit Shipping Schedule Theory

[Arthur Burke]

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 <elecraft at paceley.com> 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.
>
> --
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