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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

#181

Post by kapilkaisare »

onion2k wrote: post #31

I heard a story about a business that worked with a Chinese chip manufacturer once. They ordered 10,000 of a particular microprocessor and instructed the company that they would accept a maximum of 1 faulty chip in 250. When the order arrived there were 10,000 chips, and an extra little bag with 40 more chips in it. The packing note said that they'd sent the faulty ones separately but weren't sure why they were neede…

I heard this story some 20 years ago, only the manufacturers were Japanese. It's probably apocryphal.

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

#182

Post by MichaelZuo »

smoldesu wrote: post #140
MichaelZuo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 'smol at toast dot cyou' is a real email address? You should probably clarify it on your about page lest other folks think it's meant to be a joke account.

The domain is real, you can whois it if you're too shy to send an email.

Why do you also write 'Provocateur. Serious discussions only.'?

The former seems like it will give people an excuse to not take you seriously. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't an elaborate joke.

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

#183

Post by kamaal »

blobbers wrote: post #46
tnorthcutt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no cars or electronics, or chip fabs in this country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Motors

Anyone want to vouch for their great experience driving a Tata car? Not exported outside the middle east and India. Looks like they sold 5 of them in Europe in 2016. https://carsalesbase.com/europe-tata/#:~:text=Tata%20cars%20... .

Only have good things to say about Tata Indica. My dad was a Cab driver. Indica's were big then. We had two cars, both crosses 2,00,000 kms. The last one not only crossed 2,00,000 kms, we still use it.

Very durable and value for money.

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

#184

Post by Reubachi »

theshrike79 wrote: post #22
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…

There is a (in)famous interview with Steve Jobs about why Apple is manufacturing in China. Paraphrased it went something like "we could fit all experts in $hardware_field in this conference room, but in China we can't fit them in a stadium". The scale at which China has built up an educated work force is at a staggering scale.

Agreed, and incredible given how recently the cultural revolution stymied Chinese intellectualism for decades. Imagine if in the mid 20th century the West had a movement to ban theoretical science research, culled universities, and moved scientists to hard labor. Would the west have been able to bounce back like China has?

The eastern giant we have burdened with our manufacturing processes, logistics, etc has encoded these processes into their identity and are now the experts. Is this bad? Does it HAVE to influence geo-politics so greatly? Can't we all just get along?

I think about this often.

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

#185

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

edgyquant wrote: post #79
kalesh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have been writing software for decades. Still majority of the software engineers are only good at copy & paste. Things are actually getting worse as most answers you can google, when you can't they are just stuck.

There’s a different between a developer and an engineer.

Meh. Potato potato. Engineering titles usually means having an engineering degree, at leat in my part of Europe, which usually means having graduated from a technician university.

Just because your job description calls you a software engineer instead of software developer doesn't make you an engineer in the traditional sense. It's as much value as your job calling you a "senior" after 3 years of experience just to pay you less. As long as your titles aren't transferable between jobs, then they're not real titles.

So I don't get why people argue about these titles. Software engineering is often just overrated digital plumbing work anyway.

To me engineering means doing more safety critical work, similar to designing and building bridges, where people's lives are also on the line, so valid credentials and titles from accredited bodies matter.

What do you think is the difference between dev and engineer then?

I personally don't care about titles or credentials in this racket. Call me a dev, call me an engineer, you can even call ma a clown, i don't care as long as you pay me what I ask.

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

#186

Post by TheCoelacanth »

viraptor wrote: post #157
ElevenLathe wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it really is. Dial your time machine back to Victorian London and I bet you would find lots of similarly-run factories. As another poster pointed out, the choices are essentially 1) be honest that you are kind of a bad factory, and can't really produce anything that people want or 2) pretend that you are a great factory, get some business, learn and iterate. Eventually you can honestly promise high quali…

> Dial your time machine back to Victorian London You may want to check with Ea-Nasir about his copper ingots... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

I don't think it was intended to be the earliest example, just one that is more relatable to westerners.

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

#187

Post by ashwagary »

rootusrootus wrote: post #30
nailer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cultu…

I've observed that as well, with our local Indian developers as compared with the ones in India itself. The effort to come to the US acts as a filter. I've seen the same kind of filter with regards to Mexico. Go to Mexico and they operate on "Mexican Time" (their words, not mine). But when it comes to manual labor in the US, who works the hardest? Mexicans, almost every time. The difference in motivation is stark.

>The effort to come to the US acts as a filter.

You are right.

Increased demand stress is part of the filtering process that will expose the brilliant domestic Indian engineers capable of running these operations to international buyers.

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

#188

Post by ashwagary »

valdiorn wrote: post #52
User23 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was looking at machining in China (I built some aluminium guitar prototypes) the cost between European fabricators and China wasn't just significant - it was an order of magnitude. I got a handful of absolutely impeccable prototypes from my Chinese manufacturers, for about 350 USD a piece. The few UK machine shops that even bothered answering my emails and phonecalls quoted about 10-15k per unit.

>The few UK machine shops that even bothered answering my emails and phonecalls

As a client, I do notice communication is lacking when dealing with western manufacturers. Many act like they simply dont care about your business.

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

#189

Post by wheelinsupial »

downvoteme1 wrote: post #153

Sorry but I am a bit naive here but when Apple asks a company to manufacture a part , do they also enlist the steps in the machining process that goes in to manufacture that part Or Do they just give a finished sample to the factory and ask them to figure it out on how to manufacture this part. If it is former, then is this Indian company skipping some steps in the manufacturing process?

I'm not sure how Apple does it, but when I was working in manufacturing we were not told what steps to use or given finished samples by the customer.

In general, there is a quote phase before the contract being awarded. In this phase, you're given a blueprint / shop drawing with tolerances, 3D model, and any other specifications that need to be satisfied (e.g., material type, surface finish). If anything is missing, you can submit a request to get the engineering team to update the documents. If you give someone a finished part, it misses so much of the information that's necessary to check the parts. There is a saying, "build to print" because the print contains the key info and is including in the contracts.

It's up to you to determine how to produce the widget. You put forth your quote based on your costs, the material costs you can get, and you factor in your production yield.

The article and the Financial Times article they are citing are light on details. It's not clear if this is an issue with production, inspection, or what exactly is going on.

Usually there are some ramp up issues with launching a new process or production line, so challenges are expected. But 50% rejection is huge. I assume the "casings" being referred to are the back housing / surface of the phone, which is highly cosmetic. If that's the case, the rejection could be for cosmetic issues. It could be related to not hitting the correct tolerances. There are lots of reasons, but the article doesn't really give these details. It's also not clear if every second part is being rejected or if the first half of the batch is rejected or if there are other patterns to the rejections. Could be issues with setup, operation, inspection, or material handling.

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

#190

Post by hobabaObama »

MPlus88 wrote: post #127
rocknor wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indians are only good at talking a good talk. Citation needed.

Angela Saini in her book "Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World" bragged that India is a up and coming scientific superpower. That book was published a decade ago.

One person's speculation is a citation now?
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