Moving to mass production

Hello, I've been developing a product the past year or so, it's fairly simple but it's gotten a lot of very positive reception, I'm looking to move it to the mass production stage, I'm going to start working on a kick starter campaign but I don't have much experience (well, any at all really) in mass production. Frankly I don't even know where to start, does anyone on this forum have a fair bit of experience in mass production and product development who'd be willing to give me a few pointers? Such as what I'll need to go to a manufacturer(CAD files, Eagle files, how to format them, how to format the BoM, etc etc

What sort of numbers are you talking about?
A manufacturer would typically need your PCB which you have made by a PCB manufacturer and a "kit" of parts. Some will wrap all this up for you into one deal but they will need numbers both annual and monthly.

I'm thinking about making my first order 5,000 I'm still working out the numbers for the campaign to see where I should start/: so I have to get the pcb proffesionally made BEFORE I go to the manufacturer? And for the kit of parts, how do I tell the manufacturer how it all goes together?

Hire a real engineer like me to create the Gerber files and a Bill of Material/Parts List.

Send that to a turnkey manufacturing house, they buy all the material, install the parts & solder, put in ESD bags if that's part of your instructions, and return to you for testing.
With 5,000 you can send the .hex file and fuse byte info also and they buy programmed parts to put on the boards.

Or, you buy the parts & material, drop ship to an assembly house, they assemble & return to you. You have the parts house program the parts (ex. Digikey will do programming). They return to you for test.

Or, you buy the parts & material, send to an assembly house, they assemble & return to you. You program & test.

Place like cbas-usa.com in CA will do #2 & 3. I have used them successfully for #3, 50-lot has been my largest order.

Larger companies will do #1 as well.

All starts with designing the PCB from your schematics. With 5,000, I'd seriously consider a small batch, 5 or so, to start to check out & run for a few days. Option #3.

Then when you have all your design files finalized, can get quotes for #1. Make them responsible for procuring all material & dealing with suppliers.

Might consider an automated test box as well so you can quickly check each one out, depending on how complex it is.

CrossRoads:
Hire a real engineer like me to create the Gerber files and a Bill of Material/Parts List.

Send that to a turnkey manufacturing house, they buy all the material, install the parts & solder, put in ESD bags if that's part of your instructions, and return to you for testing.
With 5,000 you can send the .hex file and fuse byte info also and they buy programmed parts to put on the boards.

Or, you buy the parts & material, drop ship to an assembly house, they assemble & return to you. You have the parts house program the parts (ex. Digikey will do programming). They return to you for test.

Or, you buy the parts & material, send to an assembly house, they assemble & return to you. You program & test.

Place like cbas-usa.com in CA will do #2 & 3. I have used them successfully for #3, 50-lot has been my largest order.

Larger companies will do #1 as well.

All starts with designing the PCB from your schematics. With 5,000, I'd seriously consider a small batch, 5 or so, to start to check out & run for a few days. Option #3.

Then when you have all your design files finalized, can get quotes for #1. Make them responsible for procuring all material & dealing with suppliers.

Might consider an automated test box as well so you can quickly check each one out, depending on how complex it is.

So how much would an engineer like yourself charge for a service like that for something that is fairly simple?
and once I have the designs I buy all the parts and ship them to an assembly house(any suggestions?), I'd prefer have digikey program them, just because I'm a full time student and I'd prefer to keep this as simple as something like this CAN be, how much extra do they charge for a service like that? So order a batch of 5 or so to begin with to make sure it works? so the engineer preparing it will handle all the small details of where to get the parts etc? automated test box? like a device that will flip all the switches and record the response to ensure that its in working order without human interaction?

Depends on the design.
I would create a PCB, using parts available at Digikey and/or Mouser, maybe other places depending on what's needed. Simple design is a couple of hours to come up with the design and an excel spreadsheet of part numbers. If new symbols are needed for parts that adds some time. Design will typically include ICSP header for re-programming, or somehow make those 6 pins accessible.

I use iteadstudio for small lots of boards. For 5,000 might be worthwhile to find a US manufacturer. Google US PCB manufacturer, you will find several, maybe even one close to where you are located, or in CA so shipping to cbas is cheaper.
Send drawings to Steve Brand at www.cbas-usa.com, he will quote you price for stencil creation, pick & place programming, and unit assembly cost. You provide a FedEx account number for return shipping. Simple board he might just assemble by hand for small qty.

For production, you go thru the same process - e-mail Digikey to get a programming quote - I've never had them do that.

Automated test box - will need to know what the card does, what the outputs do, etc.
That will drive the level of complexity and the hours to design, build, program if needed.

PM me if you want to pursue further. My wife & I are engineers from RPI, we've been doing this stuff as a small home business since ~Jan 2011, after doing it for industry for 25 years for much larger designs; imagine two 16-layer 8x8 cards mounted on a copper cooling plate, with ~80 SMD chips mounted each side, with high density connector over the top to connect the two sides and a 5x100 connector on the bottom to connect the two sides to a 32 layer backplane holding 26 other cards built the same way, all talking to each other over a 64-bit data bus. Little double sided arduino based cards are just fun little excursions by comparison.

Hi.
There is some companies can do PCB from layout ,manufacture and assembly.
If you don't know how to create the Gerber file,you can just send the design file to them ,whatever you draw it by Cadence or others.And then they will do everything for you.