Scaling Manufacturing (Oxide And Friends)

There's not a lot of content out there talking about physical product manufacturing, so when I saw the episode on Scaling Manufacturing on my podcast queue I jumped right into it. Here are my highlights:

Testing - while manufacturing - as early as possible

If you've been aware of DevOps and Continuous Integration this will sound rather obvious, but it's always interesting to see these principles working in areas outside of software development.

Medusa: Oxide's front plane loopback board which helps identify issues with high performance cabling as early as possible

Reverso: a "mock" compute sled which allows Oxide to test the cable back plane without needing a compute sled

Single sourcing components as a relationship investment

Apple is - famously - another company that does single-sourcing (can't find the quote ATM).

Here's how Oxide explains it: it's been really great working with our suppliers and they really are Oxide fans. Um, which is nice and I think we are probably a bit of fresh air for them as well. [...] And I just think that like they are relieved like oh my god like you actually want to build a relationship with us [...]

Relationship between engineering and procurement

How a healthy relationship can help really help solve supply chain issues by attacking at the problem from both ends.

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