Foxconn Thinks the iPhone 5 Is a Pain

pigrabbitbear writes "China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn, is now taking the fall for the iPhone 5 shortage that's annoyed consumers and worried investors in recent weeks. What's the holdup? They don't have enough parts? They're training new line workers? They're too busy trying to regain control of their factories after employees started rioting? Nah. According to the company, the iPhone 5 is just a huge pain to put together. That bit about the riots is a little bit true, too, though."

Comments

Design for manufacturing?

[benjfowler]

Any Slashdotters know anything about manufacturing engineering, and would like to fill us in on why Apple can construct such a sophisticated thing as an iPhone 5, that still needs to be assembled largely by hand?

Surely a mass-marketed consumer device like that, they'd design for manufacturability, and/or design the tools required to assemble it efficiently?

Maybe, with (Chinese) labour costs being such an insignificant part of the sticker price, it's simply not worth the trouble?

Re:Design for manufacturing?

[ColdWetDog]

You probably could do something like that - for a price. And the price would be a big one. Every time you wanted to change something you'd have to retool the machines. And things do change - you make a couple thousand prototypes, find that one screw is in the wrong place and the screen cracks all of the time, you go back and retool the case or whatever, show the slaves how to screw the part in and off you go.

In your world, you would have to retool both the part and the machine. Easy, you say, just rig the machines to you can change them. Apparently not so easy - otherwise it would be done that way.

Do you seriously think the designers of these devices haven't scrutinized these decisions carefully? "The iPhone could be put together using simple machinery." Really? Then why is every cell phone, every little camera, every big DLSR and in fact, every bit of consumer electronics made this way?

It's just not easy to build a machine as dexterous as a human.

Re:iFixit

[PrimaryConsult]

Thanks for that! I found two amusing bits of information in there:
-The screen replacement is far superior in the iPhone 5 than the Galaxy S3 (I looked at their piece on the S3 afterward).
-I was most amused at finding out the iPhone 5 battery and camera are made by Sony... hopefully this silences some of those people who feel the need to post about having not bought a Sony product since **insert ancient history here**.

Re:Ug

[jhoegl]

I agree, unconfirmed sources should be taken seriously and without question.
*Disclaimer - I hate Apple and all Apple related products. I disagree with their business philosophy of a walled garden, and think that only religious zealots should buy them.

Re:Hey if China is whining about building them....

[root_42]

But to be honest, the major reason is that companies like Foxconn are extremely good at getting an assembly line for a new product set up in a very short space of time. This was the reason the Raspberry Pi, for example, was outsourced to a non-Western country - Western manufacturers could match the price, but would take months to set up their production lines. Non-Western manufacturers could get everything set up in weeks.

And yet, after some months, the Raspberry Pi foundation moved manufacturing to the UK -- for the same retail price! (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1925). So why shouldn't Apple be able to do the same thing? Granted, the RP Foundation isn't out to make a huge profit, but still, Apple should be able to source its components and products a little bit more ethically.

Re:Hey if China is whining about building them....

[Ambvai]

I got a good dose of this the other day when my sister was working with a rich college kid, straight out of China.

The concept of Home Depot, a store where you'd just walk in and buy a hammer, was a novel thought. He kind of knew that, conceptually, there had to be some place where equipment like that was sold, but the idea that people who didn't work in the field would ever go there, and there was the kind of demand to have a store that large blew his mind.