WAG about spares ratios

Ron K. Jeffries rjeffries at gmail.com
Thu Mar 27 20:22:51 CET 2008


Steve wrote:
~~~~~~~~~~
From: "steve" <steve at openmoko.com>
To: "'List for Openmoko community discussion'" <community at lists.openmoko.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:30:33 -0700
Subject: RE: Price of the Freerunner spare parts
Yes,

The information about returns and defects etc needs to be shared. First,
however, it needs to be established or estimated. I haven't seen a single
number from anybody on the demand rate for batteries or LCD or back covers.

Anyone care to guess?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since you asked <g>, here are my WAGs (with rationale)

Item:         Projected spares demand (adjust after 6 months field experience)

Battery      1 spare per 8 units sold
                  rationale: desire for spare battery more likely due
to wide range of uses
                                  (as compared with standard phone).
If Nokia battery
                                  is really "as good as" then this can
be lower but not zero.

LCD            1 spare per 75 units sold 9slightly more than 1 percent)
                   LCD breakage is not frequent, but enough that we need spares

Back cover 1 spare per 200 units sold
                   not a high failure item, but a pain when it goes.
if this is not a sturdy part
                   with perfect fit, the rate will be quite a bit higher

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A lot of money can be squandered if spares kan-bans are set too high
but the flip side of that coin is that a lot of delay for customers to
get spares leads to unhappy customers, and in some cases will trigger
swapping an entire unit which is REALLY expensive.


-- 
Ron K. Jeffries
http://blog.eronj.com




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