Apple's secretive 'early field failure analysis' quality control team profiled in new report
A report on Thursday offers a rare look inside Apple's secretive EFFA quality control division that runs down and fixes launch day hardware issues before they become larger, more costly problems.
Citing unnamed employees previously part of Apple's early field failure analysis group (EFFA), Bloomberg Businessweek put together a profile on the team of engineers tasked with pinpointing hardware defects just hours after a device launches.
For example, when a new iPhone hits store shelves, EFFA brings in engineers who designed the latest handset to field reports of faulty units just hours after a product is released to the public. According to the publication, engineers in Cupertino receive special courier packages containing defective hardware returned to brick-and-mortar Apple Stores from around the world.
Dissecting faulty units in-house, engineers are able to quickly determine the problem and hopefully issue a fix that will applied to Apple's global supply chain. Spotting a problem in the very early stages of a product's release can save millions of dollars in costly fixes and supply chain tweaks.
Sources point to EFFA's handling of the original iPhone in 2007. When the smartphone launched, returns came back with what appeared to be defective touchscreens. Engineers tracked the issue back to a flaw in manufacturing that allowed sweat from a user's face to enter the screen near the ear speaker, causing the display to short. The problem was solved by adding a coating to seal off the area, a technique Apple quickly pushed out to partner suppliers to avoid further complications.
In another iPhone-related case, EFFA engineers discovered the design of the handset's speaker restricted airflow and built up pressure during air transport from China, causing the component to fail upon arrival. The fix was to create holes in the speaker housing, a simple solution that saved Apple from constantly replacing entire speaker assemblies.
Formed in the late 1990s, EFFA falls under the AppleCare umbrella, a division that previously answered to current CEO Tim Cook when the executive ran Apple's operations arm. Still active today, the team will more than likely test out the new "iPhone 6" hardware expected to see release later this month.
Citing unnamed employees previously part of Apple's early field failure analysis group (EFFA), Bloomberg Businessweek put together a profile on the team of engineers tasked with pinpointing hardware defects just hours after a device launches.
For example, when a new iPhone hits store shelves, EFFA brings in engineers who designed the latest handset to field reports of faulty units just hours after a product is released to the public. According to the publication, engineers in Cupertino receive special courier packages containing defective hardware returned to brick-and-mortar Apple Stores from around the world.
Dissecting faulty units in-house, engineers are able to quickly determine the problem and hopefully issue a fix that will applied to Apple's global supply chain. Spotting a problem in the very early stages of a product's release can save millions of dollars in costly fixes and supply chain tweaks.
Sources point to EFFA's handling of the original iPhone in 2007. When the smartphone launched, returns came back with what appeared to be defective touchscreens. Engineers tracked the issue back to a flaw in manufacturing that allowed sweat from a user's face to enter the screen near the ear speaker, causing the display to short. The problem was solved by adding a coating to seal off the area, a technique Apple quickly pushed out to partner suppliers to avoid further complications.
In another iPhone-related case, EFFA engineers discovered the design of the handset's speaker restricted airflow and built up pressure during air transport from China, causing the component to fail upon arrival. The fix was to create holes in the speaker housing, a simple solution that saved Apple from constantly replacing entire speaker assemblies.
Formed in the late 1990s, EFFA falls under the AppleCare umbrella, a division that previously answered to current CEO Tim Cook when the executive ran Apple's operations arm. Still active today, the team will more than likely test out the new "iPhone 6" hardware expected to see release later this month.
Comments
It's not always possible to see an issue until there is wide scale deployment.
Why aren't these problems discovered before launch?
It is rather arrogant and foolish to assume you will find every problem before a release. Accepting the reality and having a strategy to mitigate problems is the best approach. Otherwise you are assuming you have trapped all the errors or doing a Microsoft/Samsung/Google and "marketing" away the problem and pretend it is not there.
Talk about a pressure-packed job...
Heh imagine Steve Jobs breathing down your neck during antennagate.
When you can devise a way to walk around with an iPad from October to December of 2009 without being noticed by literally everyone on Earth that you’re carrying the most advanced piece of unreleased mobile hardware on the planet, let us know.
“It’s not us, right? You’re not going to tell me that we overlooked this, right? Because I can think of a few things I won’t be overlooking if you do.”
I kind of wish we were not hearing about their process though because it just gives other companies something to emulate.
I kind of wish we were not hearing about their process though because it just gives other companies something to emulate.
This is the kind of thing other companies should emulate.
Customer Care and Services are going down the toilet. If other companies emulate Apple it would be a better market.
Other companies would like to just emulate the part where MILLIONS of units are sold in the opening week-end.
It's not always possible to see an issue until there is wide scale deployment.
Also this is part of troubleshooting the manufacturing process, not development process. You only notice it when you are making millions of the same items because it only happens 1 in 100,000.
Pressurized position indeed.
I kind of wish we were not hearing about their process though because it just gives other companies something to emulate.
There are very few business secrets. Or military secrets for that matter. What makes it hard to emulate Apple or the US is attention to detail, quality of personnel and a huge war chest.
Other companies COULD do EFFA but it's not cost effective for their profit margins and volumes. With 2-3 major handset releases a year vs 1 your engineering resources are spread thinner.
It is also not clear that Apple's business model is something very many other companies could successfully adopt. Sony maybe. LG not so much.
Really? What's the problem to have a defective device replaced with a new one? I was happy with my sleep/wake button issue after 11 months (before Apple set up their Replacement Program) because I got a new iPhone with a new battery. And because I get an email confirmation with serial numbers from Apple, I can explain this to a buyer who pays more for it because of that new battery.
How's that not a good thing?
Why aren't these problems discovered before launch?
Most problems are. But there is no way to test every single unit for every single possible issue before it ships. So they randomly sample X units from every batch and hope for the best.
Also in some cases there really isn't an issue with the item. They send all allegedly defective units to EFFA for the first couple of weeks after a launch and then for some issues it can go a lot longer. So someone could bring in an iPhone 6 claiming it won't make phone calls but it's an account issue or they live in a place with shit reception. But the phone will be tested anyway.
They also EFFA some units from in store service. My sources tell me, for example, that there is an EFFA going on right now on all iPhone 5 series phones (the 5, 5C and 5S) that had a display replaced and come back with an issue related to something that could be affected by that display like the receiver, home button, touch screen etc. This is allowing them to check if there was a bad batch of service parts, a failure with the post repair tests etc.
This testing unit really isn't a secret despite the headlines nor is it really Apple unique or only present at launches. But it is a key part of Apple's QA. This team is likely where those replacement programs come from. Which is a good thing.
It is rather arrogant and foolish to assume you will find every problem before a release. Accepting the reality and having a strategy to mitigate problems is the best approach. Otherwise you are assuming you have trapped all the errors or doing a Microsoft/Samsung/Google and "marketing" away the problem and pretend it is not there.
Funny you mention Microsoft. Remember the X box ring of death. I gave up after getting mine replaced with two more units that also failed. Apparently they did no testing of any kind at any point to figure out why it was happening and stop it.
Compare this to Apple which wasn't likely legally required to do anything about the sleep wake or battery issues on the iPhone 5 in many countries (since the issues didn't start turning up until the phones were several months old for most units) but they did anyway since their percent of acceptable failure is way lower than the industry norm. Half the phones getting a free repair underthe sleep wake were probably dropped etc, but Apple isn't bothering to try to sort that out. If it is from that group, the damage isn't obvious and the rest of the phone is fine then they are fixing it.
At the beginning the Geniuses were told to just swap them out for free even if it was damaged; especially if it had anything to do with the display. Looking back now, it makes sense. We were dealing with the Gorilla Glass beta model at this point. For the first month or so, someone could have taken a hammer to to glass and got it swapped out. The most interesting one was where a guy took it home that Friday night to a fancy family dinner, he let his wife use it... who was wearing diamond earrings... there were these little scratch marks all over the glass right where an bring would be. I think he was the first one our store swapped out.
Since it was so new, there were no "service parts" for them yet so store managers were instructed to hold onto a bunch in each size just in case. Awkward moments when you tell someone we're sold out only to see a tech from the back bring out a freshly sealed one.
But after about a month or so, they released a PDF with roughly a 100 different pictures of broken iPhone displays. Each picture had a description of the damage and would say if the damage would be covered or not. Obviously, the ones that looked like you took a hammer to it were no longer being swapped out for free.