Slashdot Mirror
Sony Says Recall Strains Battery Production
Sony said on Tuesday that a recall of up to 9.6 million of its personal computer batteries was overwhelming its production capacity. The stated reason for making the strain on production public has more to do with warning Wall Street that they may lose market share to other manufacturers then with any sort of PSA.
the end of Sony-Bony? WOOOOOOOOOOOT!
The moral of this story is; Don't try to cut corners on production costs. It ends up costing you more in what Advanced Business schools like to call, "The Long Term".
May the Maths Be with you!
So, what is the submitter trying to say? Do major companies do a PSA when they know that their earnings are going to take a hit?
The only PSA Sony should be doing is a warning about the dangers of exploding batteries. Perhaps the submitter meant press release when they said PSA. I always thought a revised earnings projection was more appropriate.
I think a more appropriate summary would say that Sony is having difficulty producing enough batteries and is considering the enlistment of other manufacturers to keep up with demand.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
more than
first A then B then C
One would think that after what, 10+ years of developing laptops, they'd have their shit together on this part of the system.
Now, IANAEE, however I do have a better than average understanding of electricity than the average shmo, and only 2 possibilities come to mind here as to why this happened.
a. They hired someone inexperienced to pattern, and approve the design for the batteries, with very little scrutiny as to its quality or testing.
b. They decided to cut corners in the manufacturing game.
Way to stick your hand in the Bear Trap, SONY!!!!!
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
This is an obvious result of their poor production run that had all the internal-shorting problems. They call this the Cost of Poor Quality. If you spend all your time making replacement product for no new revenue, of course you can't make new product that earns new dollars.
This article isn't about the basics of CoPQ, but about the shareholder reaction. Shareholders may punish Sony for CoPQ, but then again, that's why you need rigorous product testing BEFORE the customer gets it. If you're not testing it but you're sending it out to multiple customers (Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony Vaio, etc.), then you're just asking for trouble.
[
If they're making loads more, the unit cost will go down so they'll sort of save money on each battery. The same way wives 'save' you money buy buying $200 shoes for $180 but hey, gotta look for that silver lining.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
They are just freaking lucky that they did not KILL somebody. Or many somebodies. Like, what if one of these batteries started a fire on an airliner in mid-Atlantic?
Worse, they KNEW of the problem for quite some time before they issued the recall.
Had there been deaths, a smart lawyer would have ripped them to shreds, and left the scraps for the maggots to fight over.
Dog is my co-pilot.
The sad thing is that we all (the consumers) will pay in the end. Sony will increase the cost of the batteries they produce, claiming it is necessary to insure QC and a safe product. So there will be less competition in the market, and likely other manufacturers will follow suite in raising prices, knowing that demand may exceed production because of Sony's recall.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Do investors really need these common-sense announcments? "Sony will loose share due to battery problems", "Apple shares fall after stock investigation", "Company X is expected to have a rise in profits due to release of product Y"......... Why? Maybe I just don't understand the stock market, but I've never seen why these things need to be said.... If you research the company you are investing in, you can usually find out all this stuff your self within a reasonable amount of time. it sounds to me like they are just trying to openly place blame on the regulatory committees instead of their own production problems....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Some companies are willing to gamble with consumer safety in order to turn a few more dollars. In this case Sony is being harshly penalised for their greed, it was not a design flaw that went unnoticed, nor was it a cost cutting measure, it was a profit seeking measure. The person who gave the final gold seal to this battery deisgn before production, must either be a non-techincal Exec or an dangerous engineer.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
If Sony doesn't warn investors, and then does badly, then the investors sue, and claim that Sony management concealed its problems, and should have warned investors. Therefore, Sony makes the announcement for the same reason it recalls the batteries: it is expected to cost less than the lawsuits if it fails to do it.