Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:10 PM 10/9/1999 +0200, Anthony Atkielski wrote: >The problem is not in farming out the work; it is in the motivations for doing >so. Most companies do it to cheapen their products and improve profit margins. >In so doing, they very often cut corners on quality. > This is the sort of loosely thought-out socialist twaddle which boils down to, "a system which allows an owner to make a living is evil". You are confusing two or three totally separate things. Companies have to MAKE a profit or, at the least, have to break even to survive. Had, for instance, Zeiss Ikon made a move to producing their p&s cameras in the Orient in the early '60's, when it was first discussed at Heidenheim, I would probably still be able to buy an SL725 or the like today. Leica is LOSING money, guys: Leica has LOST money for all but ten or so of the past forty years. They cannot go on losing money forever. (Zeiss Ikon lost money for twenty years, and was gone; Rollei lost money for fifteen and ended up in bankruptcy.) If shifting production of components to a third-world country WHILE MAINTAINING QUALITY will save them, then go forth and do it! Second, a company simply can no longer afford to make mechanical components any more. Compur shutters are no longer available not from a failure of quality but because they required hand-assembly and the designs did not lend themselves to machine production; even Seikosha is cutting back their offerings -- Size 0 and 00 are now NLA -- and will be out of the market in a decade. Hence, Leica MUST move with the times and MUST modernize its production facilities to allow the maximum mechanization of assembly. (After all, the Industrial Revolution occurred more than two centuries back - -- and Eli Whitney invented mass-production has been dead a LONG time! The lessons he taught us live on.) Third, such redesigns are not necessarily indicative of a lessening in quality. To the contrary, my M6 is one tough camera and has been less trouble than any other Leica I have ever owned, including a slew of LTM bodies, M3's, and M4's. Have faith in the product and let us not carp unless the carping has some substance behind it, something more than the whingings of those who simply want to belligerently opine that "they did it best in the old days". Folks who blindly chant that mantra probably ought to make the circle complete by joining the Flat Earth Society as well. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!