Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Stringent >quality control without equal in the industry is one of Leica's arguments >to rationalize the huge cost of their lenses. But I don't want to start >another big QC debate! The most obvious argument for Leica's high cost production of lenses is quite simple: volume and not necessarily better QC. The cost of designing a lens (giving the ubiquitous computer programs),building a prototype and going through an elaborate testing programm is the same for Leica as for let us be narrowminded Zeiss. The Leica design process adds an additional step, that is the matching of the assembly production tolerances to the requirements of the optical designer. If a certain optical parameter can not be guaranteed by the subsequent assembly or production line the design has to be changed. This matching and finetuning takes money. When a lens has a fixed design and the production can start (QC in place etc), then we have the famous economies of scale. Small volumes and small production runs are invariably more expensive (and not in itself better) than larger ones. So all costs of a lens (that is design. production, documentation, PR, overhead etc) hae to be spread over a small volume. It is quite clear that the cost of glass is not the factor that determines the cost of a lens. That is again one of many myths around Leica lenses. Cheap glass at the moment is $80/unit and expensive glass is $800/unit, but many lenses can be made out of one unit. So even extremely expensive glass would add no more than $400 dollars to the costprice of a lens. Of course expensive machine tooling must be amortisized over a lesser production volume, many QC-checks are manual and add to the cost etc. So my view of the high cost of Leica lenses is simply this. A low volume necessitates a high price (see also the more exotic Nikon or Canon or Zeiss lenses). If the cost price is by necessity high,because of small production runs and therefore the selling price must be high also, then superior optical quality and a stringent and eleborate QC programm may be the only way of economical survival. Another facor comes into play. Older Leica lens generations lasted for at least a decade and some for more than two decades. Costs could be spread over a longer production run. Now a Leica generation will hold less than ten years. Leica needs to invest in ever more elaborate production machinery and also needs to educate the workforce to a higher degree than elsewhere. So while QC is ceratinly part of the answer for the high cost, there is more to know about the production process. I wrote two articles about these matters in Dutch (it seems some one is translating them)which were quite well accepted by the industry and the press. Erwin