3 ms·

This is laughably sloppy. One of my favorite customers actually took a calorimeter to the LEDs that were in one of our deliveries of router chassis. They felt

This is laughably sloppy. One of my favorite customers actually took a calorimeter to the LEDs that were in one of our deliveries of router chassis. They felt that the Amber wasn’t quite Amber enough and so they measured it. They were right while it was amber it wasn’t spec amber. So they shipped it all back. We were very embarrassed and supply chain was given a dressing down. They missed a parts quality issue. A typo like this is extremely indicative of a sloppy organization.

detaro 5y ago
What is the relevant spec for colors here? Is there some ISO or whatever for signal lights on equipment defining it?
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Parent comment probably meant "colorimeter" which will measure colors in either spectral distribution or XYZ color space. So you could say something like RAL color # 123 +- 5% in XYZ space. Or you can just specify: That color needs to be closer to RAL #123 than to any other RAL number, so then you'd also have an implicit definition of the valid color range.
  - detaro 5y ago
    What the "something like" is exactly and where it came from is kind of my question.
- jwandborg 5y ago
  It might be regulatory concerns, maybe they hadn't licensed that particular wavelength of orange for local broadcasting purposes, or EMI concerns with regards to the the off-white spectrum, at least if I let my thoughts run without moderation.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    No, this really was just ethernet interface front panel LEDs. The customer viewed this as indicative of poor quality control.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  We publish the relevant wavelength on the data sheets. This is for interface LEDs on a network device. This was one batch of a few hundred chassis, and they ended up being _just_ _slightly_ more yellow than the rest. Back they came.
mrtksn 5y ago
> sloppy organization. Or a communication issue? How do the people looking inside the assembled product tell the people who design the product that they made a typo? A few years back, the company I worked for created a landing page with an image of a beautiful young woman who was happy about our deals. It wasn’t my job, I was looking at the design out of curiosity and I noticed that one eye of her was looking in one direction and the other eye to the other direction. I tried to raise the issue with a few people higher up but they didn’t understand or didn’t care as they were excited for the release or busy with other stuff. To this day, I wonder, was it intentional? Maybe it was a joke or something I didn’t get. The campaign run fine, no one talked about it. Maybe I don’t get graphic design, maybe the eye situation was a marketing message about how the lady was having eye on the numerous amazing deals of ours.
alfalfasprout 5y ago
Was your typo intentional? Calorimeter -> colorimeter?
- foobiekr 5y ago
  No, but autocorrect loves me. I did, indeed, mean colorimeter.
  - DoctorNick 5y ago
    Wow, if you made a mistake like that, who knows what other kinds of mistakes you made?
hef19898 5y ago
So sales gave Supply Chain a dressing down over out-of spec (was the customers measurement confirmed by in-house Quality?) LED color. Nice way of collaborating, we in SCM love this. Was the color check part of goods inspection protocols? Because it it wasn't nobody within your "sloppy" organization had any chance at catching that error. I could write a book about customers being extremely picky about "visual" quality issues. Usually as a way of either returning inventory they don't want or to drive prices down. Dressing down someone about that, and indicating that the whole org is sloppy, is not the usual reaction I would expect.

detaro 5y ago

What is the relevant spec for colors here? Is there some ISO or whatever for signal lights on equipment defining it?

fxtentacle 5y ago
Parent comment probably meant "colorimeter" which will measure colors in either spectral distribution or XYZ color space. So you could say something like RAL color # 123 +- 5% in XYZ space. Or you can just specify: That color needs to be closer to RAL #123 than to any other RAL number, so then you'd also have an implicit definition of the valid color range.
- detaro 5y ago
  What the "something like" is exactly and where it came from is kind of my question.
jwandborg 5y ago
It might be regulatory concerns, maybe they hadn't licensed that particular wavelength of orange for local broadcasting purposes, or EMI concerns with regards to the the off-white spectrum, at least if I let my thoughts run without moderation.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  No, this really was just ethernet interface front panel LEDs. The customer viewed this as indicative of poor quality control.
foobiekr 5y ago
We publish the relevant wavelength on the data sheets. This is for interface LEDs on a network device. This was one batch of a few hundred chassis, and they ended up being _just_ _slightly_ more yellow than the rest. Back they came.

mrtksn 5y ago

> sloppy organization. Or a communication issue? How do the people looking inside the assembled product tell the people who design the product that they made a typo? A few years back, the company I worked for created a landing page with an image of a beautiful young woman who was happy about our deals. It wasn’t my job, I was looking at the design out of curiosity and I noticed that one eye of her was looking in one direction and the other eye to the other direction. I tried to raise the issue with a few people higher up but they didn’t understand or didn’t care as they were excited for the release or busy with other stuff. To this day, I wonder, was it intentional? Maybe it was a joke or something I didn’t get. The campaign run fine, no one talked about it. Maybe I don’t get graphic design, maybe the eye situation was a marketing message about how the lady was having eye on the numerous amazing deals of ours.

alfalfasprout 5y ago

Was your typo intentional? Calorimeter -> colorimeter?

foobiekr 5y ago
No, but autocorrect loves me. I did, indeed, mean colorimeter.
- DoctorNick 5y ago
  Wow, if you made a mistake like that, who knows what other kinds of mistakes you made?

hef19898 5y ago

So sales gave Supply Chain a dressing down over out-of spec (was the customers measurement confirmed by in-house Quality?) LED color. Nice way of collaborating, we in SCM love this. Was the color check part of goods inspection protocols? Because it it wasn't nobody within your "sloppy" organization had any chance at catching that error. I could write a book about customers being extremely picky about "visual" quality issues. Usually as a way of either returning inventory they don't want or to drive prices down. Dressing down someone about that, and indicating that the whole org is sloppy, is not the usual reaction I would expect.