Crow, I don't think anyone is claiming that CDEx is manufacturing parts for Valimed at the component level.
But that's a good thing. It's smart to design at the subassembly level with COTS subassemblies much like one would do if they wanted to put together a customized computer. If you look in a magazine like Photonics you will see that there is a large variety of electromechanical/opto-electronic/optical/electronic spectrometer subassemblies available from manufacturers that specialize in making them as their core business.
The less customized board level manufacturing the better.
Less design, less development, less testing, less QC, less specialized technicians, less inventory, less headache. Let the manufacturers that make it their core business keep your subassemblies state-of-art, high performance components.
Your point that manufacturing could be bottlenecked by the supply of parts becomes more valid as the parts become more complicated assemblies which are more and more being assemblied off-shore.
I have one vendor that I purchase switching power supplies from and they either have them in stock or there's a 8-10 week lead time from Taiwan. There never seems to be much grey area on lead time.
