When Apple (or any company) launches a product, such as the upcoming iPhone 6, there’s always the chance that a critical flaw will be discovered by first adopters. How exactly the company handles the devices that are returned and tracks down the source of these issues has always been somewhat of a secret process.
Today, Bloomberg’s Businessweek published a profile on the “early field failure analysis,” which is responsible for taking these returned devices apart, analyzing any issues, putting together a fix, and getting it into new production devices before the problems become even more widespread.
The idea is to keep easily resolved problems from becoming punch lines for late-night comics. Often, they jury-rig a hardware fix, then coordinate a solution across Apple’s global supply chain. Sometimes the problems can’t be solved quickly—remember Apple Maps leading people astray. “Every day they don’t recognize a problem, they are potentially manufacturing more bad products,” says Michael Fawkes, the former head of supply chain for Hewlett-Packard.
It’s an interesting read that shows how much effort Apple puts into identifying problems that appear outside of their regular testing procedures.
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It’s amazing, that Apple does these massive launches, and has not had a major recall and keeps it under wraps.
Part of it is, launch day and for a few weeks to a month after, anyone that comes in with issues, they basically will swap out the whole phone for people to make it right.. but, it’s not totally selfless act.. the store employee’s are told to box up the faulty phone and send it to this team.. where it’s issue(s) get dissected.
Very cool process. not aware of many companies that do it like that..
It’s nothing new. It may be done on a larger scale than others though, in part because it’s a global enterprise.
As the article says, good QC will minimize problems.
But Apple has had some big failures and, in some cases, has not done as good of a job (of minimizing negative publicity) as it has on others.
It also helps to have very favorable press and a communications strategy that includes trying to discredit unfavorable coverage, even if it’s accurate.
Apple is not untouchable.
yawn.
typo in 2nd paragraph: “Toady” instead of “Today”
Thanks! Fixed.