info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac) (05/31/84)
Date: Fri 25 May 84 16:42:09-PDT From: michael tchao <uw-beaver!TCHAO@SU-SCORE.ARPA> Subject: Factory Tour Revelations To: info-mac@SU-SCORE.ARPA On our recent tour of the Mac Factory we were lucky to have the Product Quality Manager as our tour guide. He revealed the following information: 1) "The Factory has just gone from 90% of capacity to 45% of capacity" No the number of Macs coming off the lines hasn't slowed, the capacity rating of the operation was just doubled! By redoing the layout of the factory and converting the building next door to do various parts of the manufacturing procedure, they are now planning to double production capacity "as soon as possible" ...."Steve says he wants it done overnight...." 2) The chief production bottleneck is currently IC auto insertion yields. It seems that IC manufacturers have poor control over the physical spacing and shaping of the leads of their packages. This leads to problems when the chips are stuffed into the boards. 3) Great effort is being taken to track line failures, out of box failures, and in service failures and trace them to the component level and thus the particular part shipment and vendor. A real time failure tracking is done as the production process procedes. 4) The greatest number of in service failures are due to reliability problems with electronic components...few problems with mechanical failures. 5) The factory has is still unfinished, a great number of the automated components are not yet operational (the robot parts carts are still in acceptance tests) 6) The factory is in desperate need of an automatic device to do final CRT alignment, color check, brightness checks etc. If someone out there knows of such a device LET APPLE KNOW! 7) Apple is thinking of adding Mac Production capability to its Cork Ireland plant. -------