Ian Grayson14 August 2007, 6:15 AM
Think about the pain of a little grit in your eye, then imagine the pain Dell is going through with its whole manufacturing process right now.
 Now in extra colours: dusty blue, dusty red, dusty yellow ... |
Growing demand for notebook computers sporting colourful cases is causing some unexpected headaches for PC giant Dell.
Dust contamination in the paint used to coat the company's ultra-thin XPS M1330 machines has been pinpointed as the reason many customers have been left waiting for weeks to receive their orders.
It seems the paint coatings worked well when Dell was experimenting with pre-production models, but proved problematic when manufacturing volumes were boosted.
In a posting on the Direct2Dell corporate blog, consumer product group senior vice president Alex Gruzen says Tuxedo Black is the only colour that's meeting the company's quality control standards. The Crimson Red and Pearl White options are causing big problems.
Gruzen explains coloured cases are particularly challenging because they require a huge attention to detail.
"The finish on the XPS M1330 is similar to a custom paint job on a car, but with one additional complexity - on a car, typical viewing occurs from several feet away (but) with a notebook, the typical viewing range is much closer... sometimes a foot or less," he says in his post.
"There was no problem painting hundreds at a time. But as we increased the volume, otherwise manageable factors like dust contamination caused our successful yields to decrease."
Apparently it can take up to five coats of paint on a case to get the kind of consistent finish customers expect. Earlier this month Dell decided it was just too hard to get an acceptable result on its white notebooks and so has stopped taking orders for them. Manufacturing experts are now hard at work trying to find a different method of applying colour to cases.
A spokesman for Dell Australia said the production delays were affecting customers here, but the company was doing all it could to overcome them.
"Our people are working around the clock to decrease the number of systems affected by delays but we realise there is no substitute for shipping product and regret any inconvenience this may be causing our customers," he said.
According to Dell, stronger than expected demand for the optional LED backlit LCD displays that can be added to the M1330 have also added to delays. Because the screen technology is still relatively new, sourcing sufficient screens from manufacturers has been more difficult than was expected.