This happens over and over:
Some big or pretty-big company contacts us to do a controller of some sort. It usually involves something their engineers don't want to do, precision measurement or picosecond timing or something. The requirement is a panic: they absolutely have to have it in six weeks, two months, three months, something impossible like that. So we work overtime to give them a best-effort proposal.
Then nothing. Nothing for six months, a year, even more. Then, after we'd written them off, they're back, still in a "we must have this in three months" panic. We say OK, we'll do it, cut a purchase order. They then *don't cut a PO*, but start the clock on our ship date. Even if we quoted shipment "ARO".
The other thing they'll do is expect 3 months design/test/firmware/ship, but not answer critical questions or make decisions for weeks. And some of the decisions they make are clearly politically driven, even when they are technically wrong and impact the project negatively.
Bizarre.
Since these are usually big, very profitable companies, they must possess some mysterious economy of scale that lets then make big bucks but still run projects this way. I wish I could do that.
John