Comment by bob1029

21 hours ago

> If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic

Isn't the entire point of a machine shop to be these things?

> capacity in hardware manufacturing has rotted away to the point where things are hanging on by a thread.

You cannot make a profit on a manufacturing line that is not being utilized. Keeping spare tools around and functional just in case is very expensive insurance policy.

Semiconductor manufacturing follows these rules as aggressively as possible. The entire line is built based on the speed of the highest cost tools. There are cases where having redundant tooling would definitely prevent some scrap events, but the premium on this options contract is never worth it on average.