First we must discuss what type of translation you need. Do you need to program pick and placement machines and do testing of final assemblies? This analysis assumes you need this kind of data from a CAD file or other manufacturing format.
The costs of in-house translations are not obvious. Do you have a specific price or job order for translations? How else can you track the cost of translations? Some of the costs involved in performing translations are:
Software: Prices range from $1000 to over $5000 per software translator. This could be amortized over many jobs. Let’s say you are doing 20 translations a year with this particular format. So the cost per translation is: $50 to $250. For the sake of this paper let’s take the middle road and estimate the cost of translator to be $150.00 per translation.
Computer: The computer may be amortized over more functions, but is still an expense. The average annual cost of a computer to a business these days is about $9,167 (source: NC World Magazine, August, 1997). This cost includes software (again, but this includes operating system and general purpose software), maintenance, training, etc. So, using 20 translations per year cost, the cost of one translation is $458, but the computer will be used for other tasks. So let’s break the cost down to an hourly charge using 2080 hours per year.
| $9,167/year | / | 2080 Hours/year | = | $4.41/hour. |
Time is another cost that needs considering. In your company you have a finite set of resources, a given number of employees. You have a scheduling problem. How do you quantify time value in the production equation?
When your programmer is translating, your programmer is not programming. So should we include the line downtime? Let’s not for the sake of this discussion. Let’s say one translation takes only a few minutes to at the most 15 minutes. That sounds reasonable. When programmer runs the data through the translator,
OK, the only way to verify that a component translated properly is view or check each component. This could take only a short time for a resistor or a longer time for a capacitor that needs its rotation fixed. All ICs and polar components need their orientation checked.
Let’s say your programmer has some spiffy software that can check 5 components a minute. Boards and panels may have as few a hundred to a few thousand components. The highest count I have heard of is over 15,000 while an average motherboard has 1,500. Cell phone boards have as few as 700, but in a panel, the count will be back to the 5,000 component level.
At least in a panel the translator only has to check one board very closely and a quick check on the other boards could be done. But, really, this panel is going into a production run of 10,000 panels so a very complete check of the panel needs to be done for minimum quality control.
What do we have so far? For simplicity let’s say we have a 2,000 component motherboard.
2000 components / 5 components / minute = 400 minutes or 6.67 hours.
What about the board itself? Are you trying to get Gerber files for the manufacture of the boards? A board may have 10 layers. Let us just stick to a board translation to GenCAD the Gerber translation is another story.
| $150.00 | + | ($40/hour | + | $4.41/hour) | x | (6.67 hours) | x | 1.33 | = | $543.97. |
| Translator | Labor | Computer | Time | Fudge | Total |
The 1.33 fudge factor takes into consideration breaks, undocumented phone calls, and other interruptions such as rebooting(You are running Windows, aren’t you?). No one can sit straight through and do this translation without interruptions and breaks. So the more realistic time for this translation would be almost 9 hours, which would bring the cost up to $543.97. What does this cost mean? Is it realistic? We have not considered any specialized training for the programmer and job satisfaction for the programmer who does not like doing the tedious activity of translation.
Your programmer could be more productive doing what your company does best, producing boards. While you are spending this money on the translation, your programmer is not programming machines, troubleshooting the line, and is otherwise unavailable to your organization.
We charge $0.35 per component for the first 1000, then $0.15 per component above that. For Gerber translations we charge $200 per layer, depending on complexity.
| 1000 components | x | $0.35 | = | $350.00 |
| 1000 components | x | $0.15 | = | $150.00 |
| 2000 components | Total | = | $500.00 | |
We guarantee the translation to be accurate and production ready. Every component is examined for proper translation. Every via, pad, and trace is examined in Gerber translations.
We bring our expertise in the translation of data so that you are assured of accurate translations. Our professional engineering staff has over twenty years in the CAD and manufacturing arena.
We offload the job of translation from your workers so that they are building boards and not doing highly detailed translations. Your worker's job satisfaction goes up. You get a better product.