Ron,
On the first Network Attach product I helped develop, the IBM 4033 External
Network Adapters, we wound up with 156 top bills-of-materials to cover three
basic models (announced in 1991):
* 4/16Mbps Token-Ring.
* 10BASE-T/10BASE2 Ethernet.
* 10BASE-T Ethernet).
We had:
* Two basic raw cards, with the Ethernet card being populated with/without the
10BASE2 components.
times
* Two sets of one-time-programmable (OTP) EPROM's, because the EPROM's were not
big enough to hold both
OS/2 and Netware code.
times
* Three power supplies-- a US/Canada single-output power supply, a "worldwide"
dual-output power supply, and a
"Nordic" dual-output power supply for Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway,
Sweden, and Switzerland because we
could not get the "worldwide" power supply approved for these countries.
times
* Nine line cords.
times
* Five sets of documentation in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
This was a manufacturing nightmare, as you may imagine, just trying to keep all
the different pieces in stock! Distribution was also a great pain, because we
had to build units for specific markets and could not shuffle them to take care
of excess demand in one country from excess inventory in another country.
Customer service wasn't too happy with us either, because they had to keep six
adapters and three power supplies in stock worldwide.
Our next External Network Adapter, announced in 1993, was the Lexmark MarkNet
XLe. We had two basic models, a 4/16Mbps Token-Ring unit and a 10BASE-T/10BASE2
unit, with two parallel ports. We had an optional serial port, making a total
of four variants for the product. We included enough flash ROM on this unit to
hold all the protocols that a customer would need (OS/2, Netware, unix's, etc.)
(Scratch one set of EPROM's.) I again developed the power supply, this time a
switcher operating from 90-256VAC 50-60Hz, and which we got approved for
worldwide use. (Scratch two power supplies.) The power connector was an
appliance input/output connector. We used a universal (HARSVT) jumper cord with
an IEC 320-C13 shrouded male connector on one end and an IEC 320-C14 plug on the
other end. We "stole" the linecord from a printer, and plugged it into the the
appliance inlet. The jumper cord went from the appliance outlet on the MarkNet
XLe to the printer's appliance input. (Scratch eight linecords.) The user
documentation was in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, with
technical documentation only in English. (Scratch four sets of documentation.)
So, to sell four variants worldwide, we had only *four* top bills of material.
We have used this same scheme on all of our External Network Adapters we have
developed since 1993, and it has saved us a tremendous amount of grief in
purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service.
If you would like to see what kind of a mess you can get into for worldwide
products, and how sweetly switcher power supplies and universal linecords can
cover them, please take a look at Oscar Overton's and my webpage:
ftp://ftp.lexmark.com/pub/networking/internat.htm
THAT is why I like universal cordage.
John Barnes Advisory Engineer
Lexmark International
-------------------------------------------
This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety
Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list.
Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/
To cancel your subscription, send mail to:
[email protected]
with the single line:
unsubscribe emc-pstc
For help, send mail to the list administrators:
Michael Garretson: [email protected]
Dave Heald [email protected]
For policy questions, send mail to:
Richard Nute: [email protected]
Jim Bacher: [email protected]
All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at:
No longer online until our new server is brought online and the old
messages are imported into the new server.
