So within a month of my writing that Apple would welcome a head-to-head battle with Samsung fought on the grounds of product design and material quality, Samsung phones literally start spontaneously exploding. I didn’t expect to have confirmation so soon. And for Samsung's recall to happen during the iPhone 7’s launch week sounds like one of those unbelievable plot twists in a TV show.
For anyone in manufacturing this is a worst-case scenario. The likelihood of products exploding in customers’ hands is normally so remote that we would use the phrase as a generic illustration to make a point. I could imagine a Dilbert cartoon along the lines of:
Pointy-haired boss to Dilbert: “Are we on track to meet our Sales Forecast for the month?”
Dilbert: “Barring our products starting to explode, it’s a lock”
My first thought on this whole Samsung fiasco is that this could happen to anyone. Especially when you’re dealing with parts shipped to your assembly plant from suppliers. But then it came out that these were Samsung-produced batteries.
Now, receiving poor quality products from your supplier is no excuse. I worked at the manufacturing plant that supplied Toyota with accelerator pedals. Toyota mandated that we had to test every single spring that was used prior to assembly to ensure it met the PSI specs. Every single one. The amount of money required to invent the machinery and program the robots was enormous. Plus, it greatly increased the lead time to provide Toyota with their parts. But the risk justified the expense.
Finding out these were Samsung-produced batteries raises the level of incompetence even higher. They controlled the whole vertical stack. There should be quality checks in place, tests that are run, audits of procedures that take place.
But is this really surprising to anyone? If someone told that me that one of the following two companies was going to have a massive product recall for battery problems given their modus operandi. Who would you guess it would be?
Company A: It is not uncommon for them to push a product launch back. They use proprietary charge ports which reduces voltage variation. Tend to let others work out the kinks with new technologies.
Company B: Regularly moves product launches up to beat the competition. Uses standard charging ports which allows for customers using wide variation of chargers. Will push the envelope on new technologies like fast-charge or wireless-charging to win the spec war.
So who did you pick? Yeah, me too.
Sure, no one is impervious to quality issues cropping up. But to a certain extent, companies make their own bad or good luck. Based on my observations on Samsung’s mobile phone products, I won’t buy anything from Samsung, whether it’s a refrigerator, TV, or DVD player. Why? Because they’ve shown themselves to be the kind of company that will make unwise product-feature decisions for the customer or hastily shove products to market before they’re ready.
The examples of questionable decision-making at Samsung go on and on. Take those horrible PenTile displays that they used to put in the first Notes or the foolish decision to go to LTE so soon so that their batteries ran down so fast. They jumped the gun with the first Touch ID, which never worked. Then there was the decision to use plastic cases that didn’t conduct heat so that heat soaked their processors. Their market share is truly a testament to the power of marketing and advertising.
Like I said, companies make their own luck. Good or bad.
Pointy-haired boss to Dilbert: “Are we on track to meet our Sales Forecast for the month?”
Dilbert: “Barring our products starting to explode, it’s a lock”
My first thought on this whole Samsung fiasco is that this could happen to anyone. Especially when you’re dealing with parts shipped to your assembly plant from suppliers. But then it came out that these were Samsung-produced batteries.
Now, receiving poor quality products from your supplier is no excuse. I worked at the manufacturing plant that supplied Toyota with accelerator pedals. Toyota mandated that we had to test every single spring that was used prior to assembly to ensure it met the PSI specs. Every single one. The amount of money required to invent the machinery and program the robots was enormous. Plus, it greatly increased the lead time to provide Toyota with their parts. But the risk justified the expense.
Finding out these were Samsung-produced batteries raises the level of incompetence even higher. They controlled the whole vertical stack. There should be quality checks in place, tests that are run, audits of procedures that take place.
But is this really surprising to anyone? If someone told that me that one of the following two companies was going to have a massive product recall for battery problems given their modus operandi. Who would you guess it would be?
Company A: It is not uncommon for them to push a product launch back. They use proprietary charge ports which reduces voltage variation. Tend to let others work out the kinks with new technologies.
Company B: Regularly moves product launches up to beat the competition. Uses standard charging ports which allows for customers using wide variation of chargers. Will push the envelope on new technologies like fast-charge or wireless-charging to win the spec war.
So who did you pick? Yeah, me too.
Sure, no one is impervious to quality issues cropping up. But to a certain extent, companies make their own bad or good luck. Based on my observations on Samsung’s mobile phone products, I won’t buy anything from Samsung, whether it’s a refrigerator, TV, or DVD player. Why? Because they’ve shown themselves to be the kind of company that will make unwise product-feature decisions for the customer or hastily shove products to market before they’re ready.
The examples of questionable decision-making at Samsung go on and on. Take those horrible PenTile displays that they used to put in the first Notes or the foolish decision to go to LTE so soon so that their batteries ran down so fast. They jumped the gun with the first Touch ID, which never worked. Then there was the decision to use plastic cases that didn’t conduct heat so that heat soaked their processors. Their market share is truly a testament to the power of marketing and advertising.
Like I said, companies make their own luck. Good or bad.
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