The Factory Floor, Part 1 of 4:The Quotation (or, How to Make a BOM). Bunnie writes -

This month, I will be teaching a few MIT Media Lab graduate students and doing a bit of a “geek tour” of Shenzhen – we will visit several factories and live among the electronic markets to facilitate new directions and expand horizons in the students’ hardware-oriented research projects.

As part of the course, they will learn how to scale up their research utilizing the China manufacturing ecosystem. These lessons may also be useful for Makers looking to bootstrap a product in moderate volumes (hundreds to thousands of units). I will share some tips and insights from the course in four posts over the next month covering:
Getting a quotation: documentation standards (how to make a BOM)
Process optimization: design for manufacturing and test jigs
Industrial design for upstarts: guerrilla engineering on a shoestring budget
How to pick a factory: building and maintaining partnerships

Read more.