Au Group Electronics SAE J1939 simulator Gen II release

[Funny N.]

The long waiting Au SAE J1939 simulator Gen II editions are now available.
http://www.auelectronics.com/System-J1939Simulator.htm
simplified user manual is available here:
http://www.auelectronics.com/UserManual-SAE-J1939Simulator.htm

Major updates are listed here:
1. All Gen II editions have the same software codes as Gen I editions. Both Gen I and Gen II will have the same future firmware updates.
2.              All Gen II editions have the same microcontroller hardware design as Gen I editions.
3. The major changes on Gen II editions are listed as:
       a)All Gen II editions now include an enclosure.
       b)A DB9 male connector is used for Power, Ground, CAN_H and CAN_L signal.
       c)All Gen II editions are  smaller on size with the state of the art SMD technology.
Summary of Au SAE J1939 Simulators and    Accessories Part#
Non-Plus    Edition Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Engine Basic Edition) SIMJ1939-001
Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Engine Premium Edition) SIMJ1939-002
Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Vehicle Platinum Edition) SIMJ1939-003
Plus    Edition Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Engine Basic Plus Edition) SIMJ1939-004
Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Engine Premium Plus Edition) SIMJ1939-005
Au SAE J1939    Simulator (Vehicle Platinum Plus Edition) SIMJ1939-006
Accessories RS232    Serial Extension Cable CBL-RS232-01
4-wire    cable for power supply and CAN network connection CBL-CAN-01
Those of you who were told on-hold can place order now before it went out of stock quick. Thanks for your support and patient.

 Funny N.
Au Group Electronics, New Bedford, MA, http://www.AuElectronics.com



     
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[Vitaliy-2]

Funny NYPD wrote:
> The long waiting Au SAE J1939 simulator Gen II editions are now available.

Hi Funny,

Back in May, I sent you a private message expressing our company's interest
in selling your products on http://www.obd2cables.com. I want to repeat some
of the things I said, and provide additional comments for the benefit of
other list members (especially small business owners involved in
manufacturing).

- AuG's quantity discount is 5%. With that kind of razor-thin profit margin,
it would be hard to just break even. Most vendors that we deal with, offer a
minimum 40% discount off their retail price (and we do the same for our
distributors).

- AuG requires that resellers match the price on their website. None of our
vendors dictate what our retail price should be, and we have never imposed
such requirement on companies that sell our products. Competition benefits
you, the customer, and your resellers.

- "The price break only applies to the SIMJ1939-xx and accessories; no price
break on annual support & annual upgrade, and license management."
Translation: your resellers have zero incentive to sell annual support,
upgrades, and license management.

- None of our vendors have ever insisted on us providing information about
the "size and structure of our company", or monthly visitors to our site.
Such information is irrelevant in a cash transaction. Why do you need it,
anyway?

I finished my email with:

"Please let me know whether you are willing to compromise on the above
issues. Your products seem to offer functionality similar to DGTech and
Vector products, at a lower cost, and we feel that our website is a perfect
vehicle to sell your simulators."

I never heard back from Mike or yourself, so I have to assume you aren't
willing to compromise. Which is astonishing to me, since the transaction
would have been virtually risk-free to you (prepaid), and could have easily
tripled your sales. The stand-alone J1939 simulators we currently offer on
our site are selling like pancakes (in large part thanks to our focused
marketing effort):

http://www.obd2cables.com/products/product_info.php?products_id=118

By choosing to keep the price/cost ratio so high, and making it difficult
for companies to sell your products, you provide a huge incentive for other
companies to create devices with similar functionality. I won't be surprised
if in six months, there will be a simulator with an identical feature set,
selling for less than half the price. It's important to remember that it's
better to sell 1000 units at $100 a pop, than 10 at $1000.

Best regards,

Vitaliy

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[Tomás Ó hÉilidhe-2]

Vitaliy wrote:
> It's important to remember that it's
> better to sell 1000 units at $100 a pop, than 10 at $1000.

1000 x $100    =    $100,000

10 x $1000   =   $10,000

I don't know what the product is, but another thing I would take into
account is the irritation I have from people calling me when they've got
difficulty with their product. If the product in question is
low-maintenance, then sure go with the 1000 units. But if you're gonna
be getting phone calls from 5% of the customers, it might be worth
taking $10,000 instead of $100,000.

5% of 1000 customers = 50 phonecalls

5% of 10 customers = half a phonecall

Just thought I'd throw that in there. I get phonecalls from people who
have put the cable into the wrong socket, even though the instructions
clearly state which socket it goes in. Then, when I ask them to make
sure it's in the right socket, they reply that they're 100% certain it's
in the right socket because they "put it back into the same socket that
they took it out of". Then when I ask them to actually look at what's
written above the socket, they call out the wrong name. And then there's
the people who hit Factory Reset on the product (which by the way can't
be done accidentally). Some people are just thick with a capital T.

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[Roger, in Bangkok]

Ahhh .. basic design weaknesses?

Nothing can be designed idiot-proof enough, cables and connectors being the
ifrst objects of their affection:-)

Regards/Roger, in Bangkok

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 7:17 PM, Tomás Ó hÉilidhe <toe@...> wrote:

>
> Vitaliy wrote:
> > It's important to remember that it's
> > better to sell 1000 units at $100 a pop, than 10 at $1000.
>
> 1000 x $100    =    $100,000
>
> 10 x $1000   =   $10,000
>
> I don't know what the product is, but another thing I would take into
> account is the irritation I have from people calling me when they've got
> difficulty with their product. If the product in question is
> low-maintenance, then sure go with the 1000 units. But if you're gonna
> be getting phone calls from 5% of the customers, it might be worth
> taking $10,000 instead of $100,000.
>
> 5% of 1000 customers = 50 phonecalls
>
> 5% of 10 customers = half a phonecall
>
> Just thought I'd throw that in there. I get phonecalls from people who
> have put the cable into the wrong socket, even though the instructions
> clearly state which socket it goes in. Then, when I ask them to make
> sure it's in the right socket, they reply that they're 100% certain it's
> in the right socket because they "put it back into the same socket that
> they took it out of". Then when I ask them to actually look at what's
> written above the socket, they call out the wrong name. And then there's
> the people who hit Factory Reset on the product (which by the way can't
> be done accidentally). Some people are just thick with a capital T.
>
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[Vitaliy-2]

Tomás Ó hÉilidhe wrote:

>> It's important to remember that it's
>> better to sell 1000 units at $100 a pop, than 10 at $1000.
>
> 1000 x $100    =    $100,000
>
> 10 x $1000   =   $10,000
>
> I don't know what the product is, but another thing I would take into
> account is the irritation I have from people calling me when they've got
> difficulty with their product. If the product in question is
> low-maintenance, then sure go with the 1000 units. But if you're gonna
> be getting phone calls from 5% of the customers, it might be worth
> taking $10,000 instead of $100,000.

The math does not support your conclusion.

> 5% of 1000 customers = 50 phonecalls

Assuming $100/hr and each phone call taking one hour,

$100,000 - $5,000 = $95,000

> 5% of 10 customers = half a phonecall

$10,000 - $50 = $9,950

> Just thought I'd throw that in there. I get phonecalls from people who
> have put the cable into the wrong socket, even though the instructions
> clearly state which socket it goes in. Then, when I ask them to make
> sure it's in the right socket, they reply that they're 100% certain it's
> in the right socket because they "put it back into the same socket that
> they took it out of". Then when I ask them to actually look at what's
> written above the socket, they call out the wrong name. And then there's
> the people who hit Factory Reset on the product (which by the way can't
> be done accidentally).

Sounds like you work in tech support for an internet company?

Anytime we get a phone call from someone having difficulty using our
product, we assume that it is a problem with the product's design, not the
customer's intelligence or motor skills. Every week there is a tech support
meeting, with one of the engineers in attendance. One of the purposes of the
meeting, is to identify the biggest headache for tech support (and
presumably, the customer). Solutions range from changing the hardware
design, updating software, or even as trivial as changing a sentence in the
installation guide. Time and time again, this approach proves the old
axiom -- "Quality Is Free". The effort put into improving a product pays for
itself many times over through increased sales, and reduced support costs.

> Some people are just thick with a capital T.

Some engineers are just Arrogant, with a capital A. :)

Vitaliy

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[William "Chops" Westfield]

On Jul 13, 2008, at 2:49 PM, Vitaliy wrote:

> Anytime we get a phone call from someone having difficulty using our
> product, we assume that it is a problem with the product's design,  
> not the
> customer's intelligence or motor skills.

Ah.  A luxury that comes from selling 100x $1000 boxes rather than  
10000x $100 boxes!

Seriously: providing "niche" tools and products is a very different  
business than running a "standard" manufacturing facility.  There's a  
lovely time period in high-tech startups where "the engineers" get to  
do everything from picking parts to boxing shipments and doing  
customer support.  But it doesn't scale infinitely, and sooner or  
later you have both a customer support department AND customers  
worthy of Dilbert cartoons (entirely separate from the cartoons about  
engineering management!)
I have fond (sort-of) memories of the first "clueless" support  
engineer I had to deal with.  He couldn't figure out the low bits of  
a decimal number (as in "the tty number is encoded in the low 8 bits  
of the tcp port number", for example), but he was quite good at  
digging an answer out of engineering, and hand-holding the  
customers.  (at least, customers who were similarly clueless.  
Another frequent complaint as we got bigger was from the customers  
who had LOTS of clues is that they could not longer call customer  
service and end up talking with someone who knew more than they did  
(nor anyone able to have a technical discussion on what COULD be wrong.)

Make no mistake; doing "customer service" is HARD, and doing it well  
for large numbers of customers is VERY hard.  Having been involved  
in most of the possible sizes of a growing startup from "small" to  
"very large indeed", I can definitely see the attraction of  
maintaining a company size on the "small" size.  Dollars of sales,  
absolute profit, and extreme growth are not the only measures of  
"success."

BillW

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[Antonio L. Benci-2]

It is not whether clients are "Thick" or engineers are "Arrogant". I
work both with professional Engineers and career Academics, I am
generally the go between, what some would class as a "Professional
Officer". In most, if not all cases, it comes down to clarity of
information supplied and education.

I am constantly reminded of the lack of understanding between the
Engineers and the Physicists. How satisfying it is when both parties sit
down and discuss the pertinent issues and generally find a common point
of agreement...

Antonio

Vitaliy wrote:
>
>> Some people are just thick with a capital T.
>
> Some engineers are just Arrogant, with a capital A. :)
>
> Vitaliy
>


[nino_benci.vcf]

---

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fn:Antonio Benci
n:Benci;Antonio
org:Monash University;School of Physics
adr:;;PO Box 27;Monash University;VIC;3800;Australia
email;internet:nino.benci@...
title:Professional Officer / E&IS Manager
tel;work:[phone]
tel;fax:[phone]
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:http://www.physics.monash.edu.au
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---

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[Vitaliy-2]

"William "Chops" Westfield" wrote:
>> Anytime we get a phone call from someone having difficulty using our
>> product, we assume that it is a problem with the product's design,
>> not the
>> customer's intelligence or motor skills.
>
> Ah.  A luxury that comes from selling 100x $1000 boxes rather than
> 10000x $100 boxes!
> Seriously: providing "niche" tools and products is a very different
> business than running a "standard" manufacturing facility.

Bill, we've passed the 10000 units point a long time ago. I'd say we're more
of a "standard" manufacturing facility, where manufacturing costs exceed the
costs of engineering a product.

> There's a
> lovely time period in high-tech startups where "the engineers" get to
> do everything from picking parts to boxing shipments and doing
> customer support. But it doesn't scale infinitely, and sooner or
> later you have both a customer support department AND customers
> worthy of Dilbert cartoons (entirely separate from the cartoons about
> engineering management!)

You're attacking a straw man of your own making. Show me where I advocated
having the engineers pick parts, box shipments, or do customer support.

[snip]
> Make no mistake; doing "customer service" is HARD, and doing it well
> for large numbers of customers is VERY hard.  Having been involved
> in most of the possible sizes of a growing startup from "small" to
> "very large indeed", I can definitely see the attraction of
> maintaining a company size on the "small" size.

Providing good customer service is not as hard as you make it sound.  We've
been doing it quite successfully for a number of years. There are a number
of simple common-sense guidelines that need to be followed, not the least of
them is to give the customer the benefit of a doubt, instead of right away
assuming he's an idiot. Joel Spolsky has a good article on customer service:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

But the key idea is that you need a positive feedback loop between the tech
support folks and the engineering department. Joel puts it this way:

"...you can't outsource tech support: they have to be right there at the
same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. Many
software companies still think that it's "economical" to run tech support in
Bangalore or the Philippines, or to outsource it to another company
altogether. Yes, the cost of a single incident might be $10 instead of $50,
but you're going to have to pay $10 again and again.

When we handle a tech support incident with a well-qualified person here in
New York, chances are that's the last time we're ever going to see that
particular incident. So with one $50 incident we've eliminated an entire
class of problems."

Experience proves the validity of this approach again and again. I can give
you numerous specific examples where a relatively simple change resulted in
substantial savings. Quality is indeed free.

> Dollars of sales,
> absolute profit, and extreme growth are not the only measures of
> "success."

What about "staying in business", is that a good measure of success?

It's about fundamental economics principles, and simple math. Lower price
means higher demand. Assuming two companies have the same development costs,
the one that sells more units will win in the end -- because the fixed
overhead is getting divided into the number of units sold.

To use an example from the original thread, if your development cost is
$50k, selling 10 units at $1000/each will leave you $40,000 in the hole. If
you sell 1000 units at $100, you make $50,000.

Vitaliy

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