Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Dante A Stella wrote: >We have heard that the workers in Germany, Portugal, Switzerland and Canada >were trained to be extremely good about quality, even when there were no >certificates So why should they now need certificates as incentives? Sounds >like a Franklin Mint "certificate of authenticity" to me. > >And what is it really saying if a IIIg or an M3 did not need one, but yet M6s >do? That would tell me that something is wrong or was wrong with M6 quality >control in the past and that it needed to be corrected with extreme measures. > > After all, the M6 is brought almost completely assembled into Germany, there is at least 60% >(~$1200) in "value-added" activities going on there. We know from previous >posts that a lot of that value is in the calibration and checking department. >Certificates could undermine the Leica name. Quality is better achieved by >keeping any signed certificates in the factory with the rest of the records >and not airing dirty laundry in public. In fact, new IIIg and M3 cameras DID come with tags signed with the responsible factory employee's name. So did many other Leica camera models in the old days. Not sure when this practice died out, but IMO anything that Solms does that harkens back to the way things used to be done at Wetzlar is a good thing - and not simply for nostalgic reasons. I hope they do it with the lenses too - a factory-trained independent technician often mentioned favourably on the LUG told me yesterday of the awful finishing and assembly found inside new lens mechanisms these days. A little responsibility would sure be nice. As for the 60% value added in Germany including a lot of calibration and checking, I'm not so sure. Recently, Hans-Peter Lammerich posted here: >According to OECD guidelines a "Made in Germany" stamp requires that 60% >of the product's value-added (including marketing, r&d, management >overheads) is from Germany. This means that the higher cost of plumbing in the Solms executive washroom (vs. the workers washroom in Portugal), the German r&d costs and even the high cost of printing in Germany (no wonder most Leica literature is printed there) are all factored into the final Made in Germany calculus. Emanuel Lowi Montreal