Post Covid Product Design Challenges

I want to share my experience of developing a product and the challenges we have faced.

In the last few months, I have been developing a connected vehicle cluster (dashboard) for a company that has the full cloud and application software. After evaluating multiple options we decided on an Android-based Instrument Cluster with a dedicated hardware interfacing to the Android Tablet to manage the communication and other hardware functions.

I personally have worked on 3 products with Android as the user interface, and connectivity functions assumed that we would be able to get a commercial 7" Android tablet at an affordable price to design the whole solution. However, what happened was;

1. 7-inch tablets were no longer available. Also, we need a tablet with a separate DC supply socket and a USB connector. However, most Chinese vendors have stopped manufacturing 7" tablets and only 8" and above are available.
2. Unfortunately, the 8" tablets were not fitting into the vehicle were targeting. In the meanwhile, our client got a request from an EV OEM for Proof of Concept. We were under pressure to a limited version of the PoC in which the availability of the Tablet became the biggest stumbling block.
3. Added to this the pricing model from vendors has changed globally. Suppose I am looking at a 10K volume of a particular part or component and I want the pricing for the same. The vendor said very clearly his pricing would be for the PO volume only. That means, even if my requirement is 10000 if I pick up only 1000 per month, the vendor will give a quote only for 1000. So you will never get pricing for 10,000 unless you buy or issue a PO with a promise of 10,000. For the second case, the vendors introduced me to a new term "Volume Compliance" which means if I don't buy consistently 1000 numbers a month the 10000 pricing extended to me will not be honored
4. In fact, for one particular component, the vendor told us that the pricing for the part will be only on the day he receives the PO and there will be a price variation of 4 to 5 percent.
5. My friend who is a veteran in the electronics component industry told me this has become a norm for companies post-COVID
6. In fact, we have been having a protracted discussion with a client only on the pricing due to this and they don't seem to understand the change as they are predominantly mechanical system developers and don't understand the electronics well.

What I am trying to say is that the challenges for the Designers and Manufacturing Service partners the life is going to be difficult as the entire business model has moved to a zone that is completely unpredictable and the business risk is very high!