We have hundreds of 3b's just waiting to be built into instruments. We could probably make more $$ just reselling just the Pi's at today's retail. I never did fancy the use of these things in production. I've had a blast of a time developing with it, though. So I've been designing something similar on the side, but using industrial controls as a starting point. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of PLC's, HMI's and such right now, or at least I have not had any trouble getting any. More expensive initial cost, but time to market/development time is much shorter.
I understand, production use of the uSD flash versions always seemed kind of funny to me, especially with a flash drive's ability to just go "I'm not going to work anymore, sorry." That's what they developed the compute modules for, so you could put the processor core in your own storage media.
The biggest issue with getting a Pi in consumer channels is the foundation is concentrating on those compute module boards, which is eating all of the capacity. They went from an educational non-profit to a company that should be for-profit because none of their product is in educational or other learning settings right now.
We're not having any issues getting parts right now save the long lead times. They're available, just not right this moment.
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