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.

Comments

Cost of Poor Quality

[Speare]

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.