Companies like Foxconn are not just assemblers. Be it Eastern Europe or Asia, these companies exist to not just assemble stuff, but help companies industrialize their products, make it producible, drive costs down through sourcing and optimize their designs. They are full end to end shops from design, sourcing, building, packing, warehousing, and logistics.

While you can simply contract out 'factory work' - that is not the limit of what these major companies do.. and nearly all companies rely on their production partner to help optimize their products for manufacturing.

Apple may come up with an idea - but its the Foxconns of the world that work to make it a reality that can be built by the millions.

The assembly costs charged by these factories is tiny. But virtually everything is cheaper there because from the ground up things are cheaper. Space, labor, energy, shipping, etc. All your component costs would go down, all your subassemblies, all your labor, all your overhead, etc. Add into that the network of manufacturing they have there... so your ramps are cheaper, your wood, your displays, your plastics, etc etc

You also don't live in a country of 'free trade'. Tariffs, controls, taxes, etc all to protect domestic industries from having to compete with imports. Artificial limits that prop up domestic industries and labor laws that works as long as you can rely on other countries to supply what you can't do economically yourself under your ideals.

Uhh... every assembly place has such systems. Stern isn't building their PCBs by hand... that kind of stuff is all farmed out to plants that do this work.

Even modest factories would have several of these lines.. you have an integrated line that goes straight through picking, placing, and soldering all in an automated system. You then go and place components manually that could not be auto-placed.

To which someone would say... WHY? Creating PCBs is not their core competency and replicating all that manufacturing, skillset, and QA is just wasteful unless he plans on being a electronics assembly company that just happens to do pinballs on the side.

For the same reason a CEO hires a secretary... its not an effective use of his time, space, and budget to sink that kind of money into something so easily put off to someone who can do a flawless job. It's not a place you differentiate yourself with - it's pure commodity work.

Yea! I have a Pick n Place... I can do a board a minute... ok, 2 hours later I'm done.. and now I have this big piece of electronics taking up space and capital that I have no further use for for a long time..

Maybe he will buy his own delivery trucks too.. and generate electricity on his own. Why not right?

And their yearly production units produced are at what scales? 1,5,10,20k units? More? Compared to someone making 1-2 products hoping to get a few hundred units sold.

Looking closer it looks like HomePin is electronics company that aspires to be a pinball manufacturer. If replacement boards are his core competency and main business, it would make sense to have his own PCB line to a degree.. again depending on volume.

But like I said earlier.. a company doing something else that also makes pins. They are going to need a lot more energy and time focusing on other bits.. not simple PCB production.