I work in electronic device design. On a good project designing a complex device, 2/3 of the work will be iterations of design (software, electronic, mechanical, industrial). When you've finished designing it you've then got another 1/3 of getting it manufactured at a decent cost with a decent yield. And that's assuming that you have an existing relationship in China with a high end manufacturer. Weeks and weeks of trips out, production runs, implementation of QA.

Given that, how would you go about ensuring that what's coming out of a factory in China is actually up to scratch?

And even if you did, the processor on the Pi uses an unusual chip-on-chip technology that most board makers don't have the capability to build.

The difference here is that this is an already proven design? Have a competitive bid process for the right to market under the trademark, eliminate factories you flat out don't trust, then require ability to randomly sample and test on Pi's side.

If pass rate drops below agreed parameters, revoke the trademark and pick another factory. Then let the factory self-QA or face the consequences.

I can't imagine there are no factories in China that can make a profit on a chip that's being made profitably in the UK.

The only argument I can see against it would be that a commercial market doesn't exist in any volume. But I can't imagine there wouldn't be decent profit vs {insert lower priced Pi clone here}.

... The other argument would be if Pi has an exclusivity agreement with Sony UK (who I believe is the majority manufacturer) that precludes this kind of deal in exchange for pricing?

> "unusual chip-on-chip technology"

You mean the package-on-package mounting of the SDRAM on top of the BCM2835? Defer to your experience, but if Raspberry Pi is doing this then how expensive/rare is the investment?

I'm honestly trying to reconcile the following statements: "They're hard to manufacture" + "We make a profit on each one sold" + "We can't afford to make them at commercial scale"

Imagine producing 50,000pc/mo and having to do in-depth quality inspection on an sample size of, say 500pcs. Who is going to do the inspection? That's a lot of Pis.

How do you distribute? Do you ship a box of 50,000 to your warehouse and then mail them out 1 at a time to customers? Do you form retail partnerships?

How do you front the money for a 50,000pc order? Say they cost $3 per board, that's $150,000 up front in capital tied up for, say, 1 month of lead time, 2 weeks of transit time, and 1 month until you get paid by the customer - that's $425,000 at any time tied up in inventory (150k*2.5months). Do you negotiate payment terms with the supplier? It's difficult to negotiate terms without a history. Who does the negotiation?

What do you do when your box of 50k has an defect?

None of these issues are insurmountable, but there is a lot of necessary overhead that comes with mass production of anything. Deciding to MP Pis is an organizational decision that requires significant changes to company structure and resource allocation.

One of their aims was to produce things in the UK. They didn't meet this initially, but with scale managed to bring production at least largely within the UK.

Why?

What I'm getting at is, while QA might be hard I'm sure doing hard things might pay off some way instead of no way at all.

- Iterating through a project and seeing new functionality implemented can be rewarding

- The chase of business negotiations and inter-personal problem-solving can be rewarding

"Why" just strikes me as an off-topic, unspecific, and weird question to ask.

I apologize for striking you as off-topic.