Changing design mid-run? That's no good.
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Apple Drops BOE iPhone Displays After Discovering Unexpected Design Changes
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Apple has virtually cut Chinese display manufacturer BOE out of the iPhone 13's supply chain after discovering design changes to its OLED panels, The Elec reports.
That could read as the lack of presence of BOE also puts pressure On Samsung display an LG display? Maybe.
Bye-bye BOE your mess this one up big time
Curious why say you live in Asia, Instead of mentioning the city of the country you live in?
It's part of Chinese business mentality. If you want to use Chinese manufacturers, you have to have a westerner over there to monitor quality control. If you don't, you will get a mess. It works, as long as you know how it works.
This is what Chinese drug maker Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical did in 2012 with the blood pressure medicine valsartan, brand name Diovan. They changed the manufacturing process to save costs and it caused the drug to be contaminated with potentially cancer-causing chemical N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA. The really awful thing is it wasn't discovered until 2018.
My dad’s company pulled manufacturing from China to the USA because of suppliers substituting cheaper materials and the quality deteriorating and being inconsistent. It was not due to American greed. It was shady business practices.
It’s a known problem in China. Brand new school collapsed due to substandard materials and bribed inspectors, a common occurrence in some regions. The same kind of problems the USA faced routinely 80+ years ago before we got more serious about safety.
Uh, no. The builders don’t get to “change the design.” They may ask the architect to do so, or the plan checkers may require the architect to do so, but the architect is in charge and must be involved in all changes.
Are you saying the e-manufacturers routinely change designs while never informing their client?
Apple is doing business in China long enough so they know how things works over here:
- Singing a contract is not the end of the negotiations, it is just a step. Chinese people always leave out hidden costs and it is your fault if you don't think of everything and if you don't have your people on ground to constantly check on them (Apple used to send a lot of engineers on business flights to the Shenzen area)
- Chinese companies always try to cut corners as they only care about making money
- Doing business these days are more difficult as bribing officials is now out of the question so that makes life harder for large foreign corporations
- Apple can and will be pressured to give back production to BOE so they better prep a new team and send them over. It is the cost of doing business in China as a huge US company who manufactures stuff by Taiwanese companies. They are smart enough not to escalate this further just before the party congress in the autumn
- Singing a contract is not the end of the negotiations, it is just a step. Chinese people always leave out hidden costs and it is your fault if you don't think of everything and if you don't have your people on ground to constantly check on them (Apple used to send a lot of engineers on business flights to the Shenzen area)
- Chinese companies always try to cut corners as they only care about making money
- Doing business these days are more difficult as bribing officials is now out of the question so that makes life harder for large foreign corporations
- Apple can and will be pressured to give back production to BOE so they better prep a new team and send them over. It is the cost of doing business in China as a huge US company who manufactures stuff by Taiwanese companies. They are smart enough not to escalate this further just before the party congress in the autumn
Poison pet food. Poison baby formula. Poison fish tank chemicals. Poison frozen dumplings. The list of deadly products produced by “modifying” ingredients is long.
And how about the contaminated drywall?
I love how that iPadOS thread has become a standardized reference point in the MacRumors canon ?
I'm not sure what an e-manufacturer is, but the PCB manufacturer will fix board designs without telling the customer. I'm wondering why this is a surprise to you based on what you previously posted about your father being in the business...thats literally the same thing I'm saying.
Actually that's not entirely true. It's more nuanced. Really Chinese business ethics are somewhat more variable than people seem to realise. You can indeed pay China to do a top notch job but maintaining consistency and quality while maintaining intellectual property secrets is a really really difficult task. All it takes is one guy on commission somewhere or taking a bribe to really screw things up for you.
A number of years ago I wanted a simple board assembled there and to cut costs they actually made a design change to it and shipped it to me at the same cost. The change was an opamp and package sub (so PCB and BOM change). It did not meet noise figure specifications because they did not understand the design specification. A friend of mine shipped a product and it was cloned and cost cut within two weeks. This is what you're going to see all the time there and if you end up discussing it with the assembly managers they suddenly break out a case of English language amnesia...
The US and Europe are the same though. The thing is we don't make stuff here anymore so can pretend to take the moral high ground 🤣
Right, 100%. It’s so annoying that so many people think it means “authoritarianism” when in reality it’s an economic system.
I always got a feeling that it was politically motivated, especially considering that they were supplying such a small percent of screens compared to Samsung and LG.
I've heard the same thing. American made isn't necessarily fast or cheap, but by the time you go back and forth with a Chinese company 10 times and wait for shipping, the American made parts end up being cheaper and faster to acquire. Plus the American companies will better understand context, and can catch tooling issues that a Chinese company would just produce to spec.
Any design change within the electronics manufacturing world has to go thru engineering change notifications and validated by the end customer. You can't just change a spec on a component without letting the customer know and more so do it with mass production units.
In the manufacturing world, that's grounds for huge contractual fines and chargebacks.
Sure, but that's obvious. What I'm wondering is what are the technical and financial ramifications of this change? That's what I meant when I asked about its significance.
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I don’t know about this specifically, but, broadly speaking, the technical ramifications could include lower clearance tolerances on parts, parts that have worse thermal performance (because the component’s thermal performance is based on its surface area), or something like that. The financial ramifications could include parts that fail sooner than expected, screen display issues causing Apple to have to introduce a replacement program, class action lawsuits against Apple for the display not operating to spec.
Every designed part as a specific footprint it must fit and a function it has to do. If anything of the sort is made different, tests must be done to ensure the change doesn't cause any issues. Sometimes this issues are things not seen until later, much later. That's why the engineering change notification.
As per financial, two thing:
- Costing BOE more due to a thicker substrate
- Costing BOE less due to a higher yield of components versus components deemed not acceptable.
Sure, I these are all possibilities I've considered as well. But this doesn't answer my question. What I'm wondering if anyone knows the specifics.
Again, you're just speculating and speaking in generalities. I'm wondering if anyone knows the specifics.
That is specific. I work in manufacturing and those are two specific examples. The thicker the substrate, the more you use, hence higher cost to manufacture.
Every manufacturing contract has clauses regarding tolerances and clients like Apple have clauses regarding parts that don't meet those tolerances. In fact, the automotive and electronics manufacturing contracts have a charge back clause in case a production line stops due to component shortage due to components being out of spec.
For electronics the guidelines are the blueprints and the Types depending on either if the component is SMT or THT.