Ondrej Holzman The new 4,7- and 5,5-inch models went on sale today in the first wave of countries iPhones 6, respectively 6 Plus. The onslaught doesn't just mean for retailers, shipping and delivery companies, but also for Apple service and support. A brand new device is traditionally accompanied by many questions and problems.
Many of them can be solved over the phone or directly at the counter in Apple Stores or with operators, but in the first batch of new iPhones there are also defective pieces that simply cannot be avoided in such volumes. Production lines are still adapting and adjusting to the needs of new technologies, so imperfect pieces are to be expected.
For that reason, a special room is set up right in Cupertino, the headquarters of the Californian company, where the same engineers who developed the new iPhone are located. A few hours after the start of sales of the new product, they are waiting for the couriers who will deliver the returned pieces, with which a problem has been reported, directly into their hands. "They'll take them apart to see what's going on right away," says Mark Wilhelm, who used to work in return service. Thanks to the deposition of him and other former employees of Apple magazine Bloomberg compiled how Apple's entire program works.
A special program was created at the end of the 90s and is called "early field failure analysis" (EFFA), loosely translated as "analysis of early defective pieces". The meaning of immediate control is clear: discover the problem as quickly as possible, come up with a solution and immediately send it to the production lines in China to adjust the production process accordingly, if it is a hardware problem that can be solved during production.
[do action=”quote”]If you can find the problem within the first week, it can save millions.[/do]
Not only Apple has similar processes of immediate inspection and finding solutions, but it has a huge advantage in its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores. The first reports of problems reach Cupertino only a few minutes after customers complain to the so-called Genius Bar, be it in New York, Paris, Tokyo or another world city. The spoilage device then immediately boards the next FedEx flight bound for Cupertino.
Apple engineers can therefore immediately start thinking about a remedy and, based on the serial number, they can even track down the specific work group that created the given iPhone or its component. The effectiveness of the entire process was demonstrated in 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone. Customers immediately started returning defective items that didn't work with the touch screen. The problem was in the gap near the earpiece, which caused sweat to leak inside the phone and short out the screen.
The EFFA team reacted immediately, added a protective layer to the incriminated area and sent this solution to the production lines, where they immediately implemented the same measures. Apple was similarly quick to respond to the speaker issue. In the first iPhones, there was a lack of air in some of the speakers, so they exploded during the flight from China to the United States. The engineers made a few holes in them and the problem was solved. Apple denied the report Bloomberg referring to former employees of the company to comment.
The EFFA team has a really key role during the first weeks when a new product goes on sale. Of course, checking and solving problems continues in the following months, but especially at the beginning, finding and solving a manufacturing error early can save the company huge amounts of money. “If you can find a problem within the first week or even sooner, it can save millions of dollars,” says Wilhelm, who now manages customer support for cloud startup Lyve Minds.
Can I ask if the original iPhones 6 and 6 plus are displayed in Apple stores in Dresden? Thank you PS: I don't mean mainly mockups :D
Yes, they are.
Today I was dealing with something in Vaňkovec in iStyl, and for fun I asked the salesman how many people had already been there to pick up a new iPhone and I was quite surprised by the horrified look .. they said there were quite a few :-D