This is a GREAT post. The single best piece of advice I could give to someone trying to mass produce hardware in China is to link up with a production agent, at least for your first run. The savings you will realize in time and sanity due to their understanding of the Chinese manufacturing process, culture and their network on the ground far outweigh the costs.
Thanks! We went by the recommendation of someone who had already worked with this particular production agent. By working with an experienced agent you essentially buy their trusted network, which takes away some of the worry around working with people whose work you can't monitor on a day to day basis.
Yes that and its essentially like hiring an off-site PM ensuring that all the ducks stay in a row. Second to that, using a really good set of set of communications tools for async chat and issue trackers really make it a lot less painful. They communicate very differently there and being able to keep everyone on the same page is priceless.
