The Engineering Lesson Hidden Inside an Overpriced Test Bench

First time I priced out a power profiling bench for one of our streaming devices, the quote came back at around $8,000. I asked our supplier why. They said that's just what these things cost. I said okay and went back to my desk.

Then I did the multiplication. Two labs. New product launches every quarter. A growing list of regulatory standards we had to certify against. We were going to need somewhere north of thirty of these benches if we wanted to actually keep up. Quarter of a million dollars in capex, just for the privilege of measuring how much power our devices drew.

That number sat with me for about a week. It bothered me in a specific way. Not because I thought $8,000 was an unreasonable price for what was inside the box. Because nobody on our team could tell me what was inside the box. We...

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