'Apple Watch Series 7' complexity causing production delays [u]

AppleInsider · August 31, 2021 4:14PM

The forthcoming "Apple Watch Series 7" was due to go into its initial small scale production, but has had to be delayed because the new, complicated design is making manufacturing difficult.

Apple Watch

Apple has yet to announce even the name of what's expected to be called the "Apple Watch Series 7," but it is believed to feature a new design, including a larger screen. Now reports from the supply chain say that this new design is complex, and has resulted in poor production quality yields.

"All assemblers are facing similar problems in reaching satisfactory production performance based on the current industrial designs," a source told Nikkei Asia.

A number of different sources have reported to the publication that small-scale production began in the third week of August 2021, but has faced critical challenges. Specifically because of the complexity of the design, and how different it is to previous models, mean production has been temporarily halted.

Reportedly, Apple is working with suppliers to resolve problems ahead of going into mass production.

"Apple and its suppliers are working around the clock trying to solve the issues, but currently it is hard to tell when the mass production could begin," a source told Nikkei Asia.

The complexity has been exacerbated by how the coronavirus has limited travel. Previously, the kinds of problems being seen in assembly now would be found earlier in the process.

Apple is also said to have asked component manufacturers to delay some shipments.

It's not clear whether this will alter Apple's plans to announce the new Apple Watch, which it is may do in a September iPhone event. However, it may well alter when the "Apple Watch Series 7" will ship to customers.

Update: Bloomberg corroborates the rumor.

Read on AppleInsider

lkrupp · August 31, 2021 4:43PM

And when the series 7 is announced and available for sale this rumor will be debunked as most rumors are.

octomonkey · August 31, 2021 5:22PM

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

tjwolf · August 31, 2021 5:37PM

lkrupp said:

And when the series 7 is announced and available for sale this rumor will be debunked as most rumors are.

Articles like this are never debunked - how could they? Apple hasn't even announced the product, much less given a release date. So when the watch is released, we can't know whether it would have been released earlier if not for this 'delay'.

mike1 · August 31, 2021 5:40PM

OctoMonkey said:

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

Do you really think it's a mostly manual process?

octomonkey · August 31, 2021 6:17PM

mike1 said:

OctoMonkey said:

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

Do you really think it's a mostly manual process?

No. Do you?

tht · August 31, 2021 6:19PM

A variation of this article shows up virtually every time prior to an iPhone press event. It used to happen like clock work come September. New iPhone is running into this or that production problem, and could be delayed, everyone should panic. It's like a template and they just replace the names. Then, there is a tail end production rumor article sometime in January where they say Apple has cut production of iPhones by 50%, everyone should panic.

It's the nature of any complex mass production endeavor. Problems arise. People work to get them fixed. Maybe they will make it on time, maybe they will be 4 weeks late. That type of delay is of minor consequence. Missing the holiday shopping season is a big mistake, but quite doubtful to happen. It's not like Apple has not been doing this for 40+ years, and have been doing this at a worldwide supply chain, worldwide mass production scale for the past 10 years.

The timelines in the article doesn't make sense to me. I would think pilot production (small scale production) was done in July. So perhaps the reports of problems is really older than stated. The point of pilot production is to find the problems with assembly before mass production starts, fix them, and move on to mass production. So, finding problems in pilot production is like "no shit!". They work around the clock for every product to get them out the door.

mr lizard · August 31, 2021 7:29PM

lkrupp said:

And when the series 7 is announced and available for sale this rumor will be debunked as most rumors are.

How so? You think Apple will directly reference this rumour in their keynote speech and say it wasn’t true?

A product hitting production difficulties is not a far out suggestion. It happens a lot, and this will certainly not be the first time Apple’s dealt with this sort of thing.

edited August 2021

octomonkey · August 31, 2021 7:42PM

OctoMonkey said:

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

True. Do you think Apple doesn't know how to design for manufacture?

I truly have no idea if they do or do not know how to design for ease of manufacturing. They certainly have made their fair share of design flaws in the past though, so I would never assume anything.

tht · August 31, 2021 8:06PM

OctoMonkey said:

OctoMonkey said:

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

True. Do you think Apple doesn't know how to design for manufacture?

I truly have no idea if they do or do not know how to design for ease of manufacturing. They certainly have made their fair share of design flaws in the past though, so I would never assume anything.

It's an odd premise to use the idea of "design for ease of manufacturing" to judge a company's competency. You are making a premise in which Apple might not be using. My bet is they are designing the assembly line around their product. The components, the process, the tooling are all designed to cater to what the product looks like, and what features it may have. Since this upcoming Watch involves a new form factor, a new display, likely a new SiP, new speakers, who knows on the sensors, and all the other components that are needed, there is likely some more significant changes in tooling and assembly processes than the prior 3 models.

Since this is the first go around with this design, there's likely more problems to solve. So, no surprise. But, they will ship the product by end of October. I think they will cut features or have fallbacks to make the holiday season, and wait for the 2022 model to implement what they couldn't in 2021.

ecky-thump · August 31, 2021 8:40PM

OctoMonkey said:

mike1 said:

OctoMonkey said:

Designing for ease of manufacturing is almost an art form... and something not taught in engineering schools (or was not taught many moons ago). Given Apple's tight tolerances in conjunction with extremely dense and compact devices, I can only imagine the difficulties the assemblers are encountering. Hopefully the factory can find enough people with excellent vision, manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination.

Do you really think it's a mostly manual process?

No. Do you?

I would suggest that assembly is mainly a manual process. FoxConn doesn't need those suicide nets because of depressed robots.

fastasleep · August 31, 2021 11:38PM

lkrupp said:

And when the series 7 is announced and available for sale this rumor will be debunked as most rumors are.

Or it won't, because we will never know if production delays actually led to release delays or supply constraints.

mattinoz · September 1, 2021 1:25AM

AppleInsider said:

Update: Bloomberg corroborates the rumor.

So basically it is BS and just an attempt to move the market by a small amount to make money.

rg2154 · September 1, 2021 4:03PM

tht said:

A variation of this article shows up virtually every time prior to an iPhone press event. It used to happen like clock work come September. New iPhone is running into this or that production problem, and could be delayed, everyone should panic. It's like a template and they just replace the names. Then, there is a tail end production rumor article sometime in January where they say Apple has cut production of iPhones by 50%, everyone should panic.

It's the nature of any complex mass production endeavor. Problems arise. People work to get them fixed. Maybe they will make it on time, maybe they will be 4 weeks late. That type of delay is of minor consequence. Missing the holiday shopping season is a big mistake, but quite doubtful to happen. It's not like Apple has not been doing this for 40+ years, and have been doing this at a worldwide supply chain, worldwide mass production scale for the past 10 years.

The timelines in the article doesn't make sense to me. I would think pilot production (small scale production) was done in July. So perhaps the reports of problems is really older than stated. The point of pilot production is to find the problems with assembly before mass production starts, fix them, and move on to mass production. So, finding problems in pilot production is like "no shit!". They work around the clock for every product to get them out the door.

I was going to say the same... if it's not production problems, it's component shortages that could delay the release of the iPhone/iPad/Watch/Mac, etc. And these stories always pop up a month before the September/October event.

yojimbo007 · September 1, 2021 9:34PM

If anything the new squared of design should be easier to manufacture!

datumax · September 2, 2021 1:37PM

tht said:

A variation of this article shows up virtually every time prior to an iPhone press event. It used to happen like clock work come September. New iPhone is running into this or that production problem, and could be delayed, everyone should panic. It's like a template and they just replace the names. Then, there is a tail end production rumor article sometime in January where they say Apple has cut production of iPhones by 50%, everyone should panic.

It's the nature of any complex mass production endeavor. Problems arise. People work to get them fixed. Maybe they will make it on time, maybe they will be 4 weeks late. That type of delay is of minor consequence. Missing the holiday shopping season is a big mistake, but quite doubtful to happen. It's not like Apple has not been doing this for 40+ years, and have been doing this at a worldwide supply chain, worldwide mass production scale for the past 10 years.

The timelines in the article doesn't make sense to me. I would think pilot production (small scale production) was done in July. So perhaps the reports of problems is really older than stated. The point of pilot production is to find the problems with assembly before mass production starts, fix them, and move on to mass production. So, finding problems in pilot production is like "no shit!". They work around the clock for every product to get them out the door.

Like clockwork. We can basically take this to mean that a new Apple Watch release is imminent.

'Apple Watch Series 7' complexity causing production delays [u]

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