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50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

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Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#11

Post by jpgvm »

traceroute66 wrote: post #10
jpgvm wrote: post #4

Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. People tend to drastically underestimate the both the scale and sophistication of manufacturing in China. For certain products the only reasonable alternatives to China are going to be South Korea and Japan in the medium term as they are the only other hubs with the required sophisticatio…

> Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. Indeed. And stats like that does make you kind of worry about pharmaceuticals where India is something like number two worldwide as supplier of APIs to the global Pharma industry. API = Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, or typically described as "active ingredient" on the labelling of t…

Industrial chemistry is not easy but it's still substantially easier than electronics manufacturing and much less reliant on well trained workforce and logistics so it's likely fine but tbh I don't have the background to know either.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#12

Post by traceroute66 »

logifail wrote: post #7

> This 50 per cent “yield” fares badly compared with Apple’s goal for zero defects Q1: Is Apple QCing everything before shipping to assembly? Q2: Surely quality issues should be the supplier's problem, not [just] Apple's, and hence a zero defects target should be the supplier's goal, not [just] Apple's?

> Q1: Is Apple QCing everything before shipping to assembly?

Maybe they (seemingly justifiably) had sufficient upfront concerns about quality that they are sampling at a much higher rate than they would normally.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#13

Post by User23 »

jpgvm wrote: post #4

Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. People tend to drastically underestimate the both the scale and sophistication of manufacturing in China. For certain products the only reasonable alternatives to China are going to be South Korea and Japan in the medium term as they are the only other hubs with the required sophisticatio…

The United States and Europe still have the capability to make these casings, but it's "too expensive." I imagine so is Japan for that matter.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#14

Post by bcrosby95 »

LarryMullins wrote: post #9
2devnull wrote: post #3

“Tech entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa said that it will likely take three years or so for Indian suppliers to be capable of the kind of volume production needed to make a noticeable dent in Chinese production.” I wonder how a war over Taiwan would impact that time table? My guess is that it would slow it even further. India has to know it’s holding all the cards.

If previous world wars are anything to go by, a war with China would come with a shift into a wartime economy. Luxury consumer goods like iphones and cars would be an afterthought at best.

In a war with a near peer, yeah, not only luxury goods but also civil rights.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#15

Post by Espressosaurus »

logifail wrote: post #7

> This 50 per cent “yield” fares badly compared with Apple’s goal for zero defects Q1: Is Apple QCing everything before shipping to assembly? Q2: Surely quality issues should be the supplier's problem, not [just] Apple's, and hence a zero defects target should be the supplier's goal, not [just] Apple's?

When first qualifying a supplier, I expect IQC to fairly exhaustively test every incoming part. As the supplier gets better at OQC you can start dialing back your IQC.

This is all fairly normal for large scale manufacturing in my experience.

You want everything to meet spec, but the spec won't cover everything, and especially at the beginning the supplier may or may not even be able to meet spec in volume.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#16

Post by Maursault »

2devnull wrote: post #3

“Tech entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa said that it will likely take three years or so for Indian suppliers to be capable of the kind of volume production needed to make a noticeable dent in Chinese production.” I wonder how a war over Taiwan would impact that time table? My guess is that it would slow it even further. India has to know it’s holding all the cards.

> I wonder how a war over Taiwan would impact that time table?

There won't be any war if China invades Taiwan, merely devastating impact.

     If China were to invade Taiwan, the most-advanced chip factory in the world would be rendered “not operable,” TSMC Chair Mark Liu said. “The war brings no winners, everybody's losers,” Liu said. He said an invasion would cause economic turmoil for China, Taiwan and Western countries.[0]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/apple-chipmaker-tsmc-warns-t...

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#17

Post by chewz »

India is not China. And it will never compare. Chinese people are just born ingénue engineers, every and each one of them. Indians are just Indians...

https://www.ft.com/content/0d70a823-0fba-49ae-a453-2518afcb0...

> Operations in India are not running at that sort of pace, said a former Apple engineer briefed on the matter: “There just isn’t a sense of urgency.”

> In China, suppliers and government officials took a “whatever it takes” approach to win iPhone orders. Former Apple employees describe instances in which they would estimate a certain task might take several weeks, only to show up the next morning to find it already completed at inexplicable speed.

> Operations in India are not running at that sort of pace, said a former Apple engineer briefed on the matter: “There just isn’t a sense of urgency.”

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#18

Post by [deleted] »

chewz wrote: post #17

India is not China. And it will never compare. Chinese people are just born ingénue engineers, every and each one of them. Indians are just Indians... https://www.ft.com/content/0d70a823-0fba-49ae-a453-2518afcb0... > Operations in India are not running at that sort of pace, said a former Apple engineer briefed on the matter: “There just isn’t a sense of urgency.” > In China, suppliers and government officials took a…

[deleted]

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#19

Post by nailer »

jpgvm wrote: post #4

Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. People tend to drastically underestimate the both the scale and sophistication of manufacturing in China. For certain products the only reasonable alternatives to China are going to be South Korea and Japan in the medium term as they are the only other hubs with the required sophisticatio…

> People tend to drastically underestimate the both the scale and sophistication of manufacturing in China.

Also how little tech workers in India care about what they do.

This isn't a racial observation - Indians outside India are just as conscientious as Asians or Europeans are and are not included in this observation. Rather it's a cultural observation that's probably come about as a result of the outsourcing culture and lack of advancement opportunities that comes along with it.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#20

Post by passwordoops »

traceroute66 wrote: post #10
jpgvm wrote: post #4

Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. People tend to drastically underestimate the both the scale and sophistication of manufacturing in China. For certain products the only reasonable alternatives to China are going to be South Korea and Japan in the medium term as they are the only other hubs with the required sophisticatio…

> Thing is this is also still the really basic stuff. It's only going to get worse as they attempt to shift more complicated things. Indeed. And stats like that does make you kind of worry about pharmaceuticals where India is something like number two worldwide as supplier of APIs to the global Pharma industry. API = Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient, or typically described as "active ingredient" on the labelling of t…

The difference is India's been an API manufacturing hub for a while now, so I would think the hiccups are likely out of the system at this point. Pharma is also much less manual, and has standards and guidelines like GMP, so generally easier to export.

But to really understand what 50% means in the context of Apple, it would be interesting to see how long it took China to achieve such great numbers in tech manufacturing, and even seeing how long it took India to become acceptable to pharma QA standards

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