July 22, 2019

An Interview with Scott Miller (2nd)

1 hour 4 minutes

Welcome Scott Miller, CEO of Dragon Innovation!

Scott was originally on The Amp Hour in episode 113

Dragon raised money from VCs and was acquired by Avnet 2 years ago.

Non traditional customers (avocado example) don't want to stand up a hardware team

Dragon/Avnet built a toolbox for IoT, so don't need to recreate

Scooters

Education is important for customers

BOM health risk assessment

MLCCs had 72 week leadtime

Supply chain risk over time

Dragon is now moving up the chain

"Product as a service" (PaaS)

Pricing in the costs of repairs and support

Not many other companies doing that sort of thing these days (yet)

GE was trying to do with engines

Risk is that the customer goes another direction

There are now stockholders to think of (being part of Avnet)

Scott is seeing a trend in the US of a constriction of B2C startups, but more industrial IoT

High profile bankruptcies

Anki

Mayfield Robotics

Excited about growth in Europe, including more building in EU.

Companies moving out of China quickly (due to 25% tariffs) but into other Asian countries

Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia

RFQ would normally have 3-5 quotes, maybe half of them from China.

Now doing it on a more global basis

How are factories being chosen?

Looking to get to domestic factories every month to build out their "Contract Manufacturer Database" (CMDB). Vetted factories are a service that Dragon provides to customers.

"Vietnam is like China 10-15 years ago"

2000 global factories on the CMBD

Trying to build up the list for Mexico factories.

What are some of the cultural differences for things coming back on an RFQ?

China is more vertical. Or at least it looks like it's vertical. Integrated CM would make their own cardboard!

Labor costs are $5-6 per hour in China right now.

Depending on the region and the factory

Factory owners are really focused on automation

Making their own soldering iron robot

Home grown automation

Focus on flexibility of the robots

Strategic focus from every factory

Tier 1, 2 ,3 contract manufacturers

Tier 1 has access to more capital, so have fancier technology

Level of tracking is really good, to tell for returns

Used to be a prof at Olin

Took all the lectures and put them on Dragon Website

Scott does AMA sessions as well!

Pulling manufacturing knowledge back into design

Get to 80% done to bring in a factory

Pulling data back into the process for BOM

BOM health risk assessment

Most Dragon customers are between 5000 units -1M

Pebble and Dropcam examples

Most started small, needed to get in early

Ring example

Dragoninnovation.com

DFMA courses

...more

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By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

4.9

226226 ratings

July 22, 2019

An Interview with Scott Miller (2nd)

1 hour 4 minutes

Welcome Scott Miller, CEO of Dragon Innovation!

Scott was originally on The Amp Hour in episode 113

Dragon raised money from VCs and was acquired by Avnet 2 years ago.

Non traditional customers (avocado example) don't want to stand up a hardware team

Dragon/Avnet built a toolbox for IoT, so don't need to recreate

Scooters

Education is important for customers

BOM health risk assessment

MLCCs had 72 week leadtime

Supply chain risk over time

Dragon is now moving up the chain

"Product as a service" (PaaS)

Pricing in the costs of repairs and support

Not many other companies doing that sort of thing these days (yet)

GE was trying to do with engines

Risk is that the customer goes another direction

There are now stockholders to think of (being part of Avnet)

Scott is seeing a trend in the US of a constriction of B2C startups, but more industrial IoT

High profile bankruptcies

Anki

Mayfield Robotics

Excited about growth in Europe, including more building in EU.

Companies moving out of China quickly (due to 25% tariffs) but into other Asian countries

Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia

RFQ would normally have 3-5 quotes, maybe half of them from China.

Now doing it on a more global basis

How are factories being chosen?

Looking to get to domestic factories every month to build out their "Contract Manufacturer Database" (CMDB). Vetted factories are a service that Dragon provides to customers.

"Vietnam is like China 10-15 years ago"

2000 global factories on the CMBD

Trying to build up the list for Mexico factories.

What are some of the cultural differences for things coming back on an RFQ?

China is more vertical. Or at least it looks like it's vertical. Integrated CM would make their own cardboard!

Labor costs are $5-6 per hour in China right now.

Depending on the region and the factory

Factory owners are really focused on automation

Making their own soldering iron robot

Home grown automation

Focus on flexibility of the robots

Strategic focus from every factory