[Leica] Re: Let's be realistic for a minute

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

Bill <m6rf@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Quality control and customer service both cost money. Money spent on
those items comes off of the bottom line...a bottom line that Herr
Cohn is being paid to raise...not lower.

>Quality control is 'always cheaper' when it is done by the consumer.

This seems to have offended some of our fellow Lugnuts, but that doesn
’t stop his observation being true - quality control costs, and good
quality-control is expensive.

At its peak size, Ernst Leitz gmbh had more people employed on quality
control and inspection than today’s Leica camera company has
employees - about a third of the total for more than 6,000 - but in
those days a Leica cost as much as a small car.

I’d love to know what the proportion is today. To judge by my own
visits to Solms, about half the staff in the manufacturing area which
is shown to the visitor seem to be involved with test and quality
control. However, the visitor is shown only the ‘high-tech’ part of
the facility. There is apparently a machine shop at Solms where the
lens mounts are manufactured, and (presumably) a lens-assembly area,
but the visitor sees only the glass elements being ground and
polished, then the test area where the completed lenses are checked,
and the area where M cameras are tested and adjusted.

Some Russian camera equipment is the result of the opposite approach,
being assembled with little or no inspection. Here the customer really
is being left to do the quality control, but this is reflected in
rock-bottom prices - my 20mm Russar and finder cost little more than a
Leica 21mm finder.


Regards,

Doug Richardson