🚀 go-pugleaf

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.
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