I figure the companies know all this and don't give it a lot of
thought. If it is easy to be accomodating, fine. If not, oh well.
The devices chosen for a design will ALWAYS come down to the least
expensive device capable of doing the job at hand. Engineers don't
choose devices, Purchasing does. Who cares how nice they treated
you in college - if the company needs 100,000+ parts Purchasing will
be making the choices, with or without input from Engineering -
engineers probably won't even be invited to the meetings. Ever
notice how the Sales people come to talk to engineers but always
want to know who is making the decisions? They know full well it
isn't Engineering.
At the end of the day, its about profit margin - for everyone. A
product has a price target and competition to keep it there; every
bit of manufacturing cost that can be driven out, will be. So what
if the engineering time and programming expense is a little higher
if a company can get lower production costs and higher margins?
Engineering is an expense; a side issue of getting the product out
the door.
Time to market is another metric - so get rid of the Brand X chip
programmers and get some Brand Y chip programmers, they'll
understand the devices. We're using Brand Y on this job... Cause
Purchasing said so... What the heck, outsource the design or get
some 'rent-a-grunts' over here to write the code. Don't put them
on
our payroll - we'd have to provide compensation AND benefits.
Don't be overly impressed with your engineering credentials - no one
else is... Mine either, for that matter.
--- In , "Michael Puchol" <mpuchol@s...>
wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> I agree completely with what you say. In my case, Atmel has chosen
local
> reps that completely ignore potential costumers,
requests for
samples made
> via Atmel's site are automatically forwarded
to them, which means
they are
> promply ignored. So, any request for sample parts
is an ordeal
which makes a
> costumer fear what he'll have to go through
to get production
quantities.
> Imagine what a student will have to go through.
>
> Microchip, however, has an EXCELLENT sample parts request system,
it's
> convenient, fast (most of the time if parts are in
stock, longest
it has
> taken for me was 2 1/2 weeks), and you can get
quite a few
different parts
> for testing what's best for your design, no
questions asked.
>
> One thing I learned when I was an engineering student was that
companies
> that give students facilities to use their
products or services in
their
> research or projects are likely to get bussiness
from them when
(and if)
> they end up in some company's development
team. "Yeah, when I was
a student,
> Microchip was excellent, they sent me sample parts
with no
problems, whereas
> Atmel completely ignored me". I've seen
this happen, not with
> Atmel/Microchip, but with other manufacturers. I think
manufacturers should
> be very aware that students will be
tomorrow's engineers,
managers, purchase
> department heads, etc. etc.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mike
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Pobursky" <ccsuser@m...>
> To: <>
> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 5:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [piclist] Re: PIC10F competition
> > To be fair, you're not comparing apples to apples. With the
STK500 you
> > are getting a "development board"
that can program *some* AVR
parts,
> > some require an additional cost STK501 or
STK502 module. The
STK500 is
> > not exactly compact and portable either.
>
> <SNIP>
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