Burt,
Having spent 2 stints as a manufacturing engineer in the electronics
industry during my working career I find Gerry's description VERY
believable. If you've never been a similar position I can understand you
being skeptical of his explanation, but consider the following:
1) The "target audience" of the 5000 and the 6000 are similar.
2) Even though the 6000 is costlier, the 6500 is still in the same
"price point category" as the 5000 when considered as a system.
3) Given both the above, 5000 sales are bound to drop, and a price
increase (which a case redesign and new vendor startup costs would
force, along with an increase of per item cost due to the lower volume)
would impact 5000 sales even more.
4) As the 5000 design gets older, getting production quantity of
certain parts at a decent price (especially again given the lower
quantity procured per purchase) maybe at all (witness the discontinuance
of the V/U Transverter option due to certain parts not being obtainable
in production quantities) becomes a more difficult task.
If you don't think this is a real issue, consider this: Yaesu, Kenwood
and Icom have ALL, within the last few years, discontinued various model
radios because of the unavailability of certain critical parts OR had to
do extensive redesigns of existing units to use different parts than the
original design (two examples: HF/2M PA Board in the Kenwood TS-2000 and
the PA Board of the Icom 706 MKII G). Large companies like "the Big 3"
can afford these costs, but a smaller company like Flex would be
hard-pressed to amortize the costs involved over the lower production
volumes of their product. This issue is one of the reasons why Flex
discontinued the internal V/U transverter for the 5000 a few months ago
(certain critical parts where discontinued by their vendors).
There are other issues involved in changing a critical item like a
case, such as having to re-certify the radio for Part 15 conducted &
radiated emissions, which let me tell you is NOT a trivial cost (those
certified testing labs do NOT work cheap - their fees for one set of
Part 15 tests could buy a decent car!!)
I'm sad to see the 5000 being discontinued but the electronics
industry is NOT static, and when you source parts from outside vendors
that adds to the dynamics. THAT one issue was one of the real strengths
{but also a weakness from certain standpoints} to companies like
Motorola, which was in years past nearly totally vertically integrated
(raw material in one end and finished products out the other end). A
small company like Flex HAS to rely on outside vendors - that is just
the facts of economics.
As to the 6000 being late - yep, it was. Have you been reading the
"Flex Insider" issues as they've been released? Yeh I know a lot of you
might think that what is in those missives was hot air, but having been
on the other side (and had management standing over me with a virtual
baseball bat asking "why is the product late") what Gerry has been
saying is NOT hot air.
The firmware/software for a radio like the 6000 is NOT a trivial
matter, especially if you want to get it right at initial release. How
late was the release of Windows 7? About 18 months, and even with all
the work Windows 7 had numerous problems when released. Producing
software is NOT like bolting parts together, far from it. I could go on
for a number of pages with "inside stories" about radio system software
development (like the FLEX & reFLEX paging encode/decode system {NO
relation to Flex Radio} that was nearly 2 years late when introduced in
1995, or how long it took Qualcomm to sort out the CDMA & EVDO cellular
systems), but I won't take up bandwidth belaboring the point.
I said to my XYL at Dayton last year when we saw the prototype 6000s
"We'll see production units about this time next year", and that is what
happened. Where the people at Flex overly optimistic? Yeh, they where.
Was "Murphy" all over them like stink on a skunk? Yep, he was. I don't
know about you, but I'd rather wait and have a piece of equipment that
works correctly than get it early and have bugs that drive me crazy.
Let's applaud all the late nights, skipped meals, the time with family
and sleepless nights the folks at Flex put into the 6000 and enjoy the
fruits of their labor.
73,
Bill Bowen
K8WHB
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Flexradio] 5000 discontinued (Cont'd)
> From: Burt <k1...@yahoo.com>
> Date: Sat, May 18, 2013 8:07 pm
> To: bow...@whbowen.com
>
>
> That's the reason?
> And you believe in the tooth fairy too?
> And the 6000 is coming Q4 2012 ?
> --- On Sat, 5/18/13, bow...@whbowen.com <bow...@whbowen.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Tom Medlin, W5KUB, just interviewed one of the execs at Flex Radio (they
> are in the booth next door) and YES, the 5000 is no more. I watched the
> entire interview on W5KUB's web feed.
>
> Major reason is that the vendor that they got the case assemblies is
> discontinuing that kind of work, and with the 6000 cutting into sales of
> the 5000, having to retool and get another vendor would cause a price
> rise in the 5000 that would no longer make it competitive to make and
> sell.
>
> 73,
> Bill Bowen
> K8WHB
_______________________________________________
FlexRadio Systems Mailing List
FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/
Knowledge Base: http://kc.flexradio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
