assembly-as-a-service.md

[sethp]

Some notes & discussion on https://github.com/rustbox/discussion/blob/854c888d4393d9942241f484cfb7603b671a59bc/assembly-as-a-service.md

I kinda like the idea of having just an obvious "thing to do" that doesn't require producing anything and is more a service. Then we just "turn the crank" and maybe that could be the basis for other projects?

I feel a lot of affinity for the goal here; narrowing the scope to as simple & concrete a goal as possible, instead of building the machine and the machine-making machine at the same time.

The "napkin" calculations are excellent, as well. I've found it helpful to build a cost model as a way to think about the different steps and their rough sizes, and I think that's what you've done here as well. Nice work!

You asked for feedback: overall, I'm not sure I understand the idea enough to say 👍 or 👎 yet. It's definitely good practice to talk about it, though, so in that spirit I've got some discussion topics for us:

Broad questions

• Remote, how do? Or, put another way, what role would you see me playing? ("nothing to do with the actual assembly" or even "no role" are perfectly acceptable answers, I'm just curious)
• What makes Rustbox different from Small Batch Assembly different from e.g. JLBPCB? (if I were doing a Business, I might call this "target audience" and/or "key differentiator" and/or "total addressable market")

Narrower cost/sustainability questions

• What's a reasonable expectation for typical vs. minimum/maximum order volume? (i.e. $32/h assumes a full schedule, does it not?)
• What are the fixed costs ("obtain pick & place")? How ought they factor in to the per-board price?
• How would we factor in yield/rework? Presumably some % of boards will come out "bad," with a pretty fuzzy line in there about where the responsibility ought to fall. A relevant FAQ entry: https://www.smallbatchassembly.com/faq/#Yield-Rework-and-Refunds
• Physical fulfillment, lol (space, time, liability/insurance). Not really a question, just noting that I don't know much about what it means to take physical objects that "belong" to someone else and hold on to them for a while, but I think there ought to be costs associated with it. I'm noting:
  • It's harder to process 1,000 PCBs from 10 orders than a single order
  • Shipping damage/delays/lost items look an awful lot like "our bad" from the customer's perspective
  • "Unexpected loss" (theft, knocking something expensive over, etc.) is a thing
  • It's quite possible to roll a lot (all?) of those costs up into a "liability insurance" thing

Next steps

• What skills/tools are you excited to get to practice with this idea? I see some neat opportunities, and I'm interested what's feeling attractive to you.
• What's the largest area of uncertainty/curiosity you'd like to see broken down next? Is it "setting up a website to take orders," or "legal/tax structures" (NB: IANAL), or something else?
• Let's get meta: was this feedback helpful? Was any part of it painful? (feel free to ignore this one if you'd prefer to discuss privately/in-person)