I'm just getting started with hardware and still don't have a good grasp on the stages from design to production!
[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2812 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_dh38HjU
Actually we're thinking about a series of blog posts teaching folks about manufacturing, is this something you would be interested in?
I can give the perspective of an extremely small shop. I lay out my printed circuit design, order the boards from a fab, buy all of the parts myself, assemble, test, ship. I'm extremely lucky to have a good understanding of every step, so that when I'm entering my PCB design, I'm thinking ahead about everything from soldering to the mechanical integrity of the board in its enclosure. That's a lot of experience that we don't all possess, plus I deliberately limit myself to technologies that are within my wheelhouse, e.g., manual soldering. Fine pitch digital, or ball grid arrays, would force me to grow up and start paying for assembly, whereupon...
Getting boards made in moderate volume: Death by a thousand cuts describes it nicely. In my view the thousand cuts fall into two categories: First, the minor or major omissions and shortages that cause delays, force you to eat a bunch of scrap, or spending nights and weekends re-working boards by hand to meet your launch date. Imagine programming, but with a "compiler" that takes 12 weeks and you pay for every byte of code that you receive. Second, the number of board houses -- both domestic and overseas -- that will bid on jobs without sufficient skill, capacity, etc. Oh, the stories. Remember "for lack of a nail, a shoe was lost..."
That's what I see at my day job. Things have improved as we've gotten more disciplined about reviewing designs, but again, it's based on experience gained over time.
Having somebody who can provide that level of experience would seem to be a boon to the small to mid sized project.
This is really the key and is the reason that many "makers" stumble when they go from a breadboard to small production. There are a lot of steps and you don't always realize how time consuming they are in aggregate, nor which ones to optimize for.
Something as simple as standardizing your designs on an industry standard family of connectors so you can always be assured of a cheap supply and have common assembly processes can be the difference that keeps your inventory and manufacturing costs in control.
I'm also a small (1-man) shop but I had the fortune to work for a very small company right out of college as an EE. As a result, early on I got a lot of experience in every aspect of the business from concept through design, to manufacturing and marketing. I would hate to have earned all that knowledge on my own dime.