Help with headphone break in

I don't have the numbers... We are not selling "consumer" products. We are manufacturing in small quantities in the USA, so our stuff is not cheap. But, burn-in isn't that expensive. It's just an extra week of inventory-holding time and a some electricity for the heat. The double-testing (before and after burn-in) does about double the test-time. But, that's only a small part of the total labor. The pre-burn test often involves some extra steps, such as programming, and since there are some manufacturing errors and pre burn-in failures to be repaired/corrected, there is often troubleshooting time involved in the pre-burn-in test. This can be significant. If it takes half a day to test 20 units, you might have one failure that takes another half-day to repair,* or maybe you spend a half-day and a PC board ends up getting scrapped. Since post burn-in failures are rare, the 2nd test usually goes faster than the 1st test. So if you look at "technician time", the burn-in and post burn-in test don't actually double the test-time.

Like most small manufacturers, most of our cost is overhead... Direct labor is not significant! The engineers & managers make the "big bucks". We have about 9 employees (some part time). There are two of us in direct manufacturing (one Assembler and I'm a "Test Engineer" mostly doing technician work), plus one person in materials (purchasing, shipping/receiving & stockroom).


* If you've never worked in manufacturing, you might be surprised to learn that some "brand new" products off the production line have been repaired. I knew it was common in electronics, but I was surprised when someone who used to work for an autombile manufacturer told me she'd done "body work" on the production line! If you are doing high volumes, say making iPhones, you've got to do better and get almost 100% quality without "fussing around" troubleshooting & repairing things.