Lego production to be outsourced - will quality suffer?
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Lego production to be outsourced - will quality suffer? axel.REMOVETHIS.eng 06-20-2006
Posted by on June 20, 2006, 9:03 pm
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Today Lego announced that they'll outsource major parts of production
from Billund and Enfield to factories in Mexico and eastern Europe,
run by a company called "Flextronics" (flextronics.com) :
http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=pressdetail&contentid=20727&countrycode=2057&yearcode=&archive=false

Is it just me that worries if quality will suffer from this? Lego
already have had some quality issues, possibly from earlier attempts
at outsourcing: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=12182
Ignore the obviously misshapen pieces on this page, they're the
results of individual mishaps and promptly replaced. The real issue is
the slightly-out-of-spec pieces like those in the "Set10148" folder,
in this case plates that's slightly horizontally offset or
thinner/thicker than they're supposed to be.

Another issue is colors.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1627086
This picture shows that tan Lego and Geotrack pieces underwent a
similar color change between 2004 and 2005, indicating the possibility
that they were made at the same factory. If that's the case, it might
mean that it (due to limited plastic mixing capacity) could be
considerably cheaper to use some standard color rather than get it
exact to spec. If so, we might see far more "bley" issues in the
future.

If the quality control is insufficient, I'm afraid this might hurt
Lego *real bad*. I suspect that problems will accumulate and suddenly
surface as collectors gets above a critical percentage of sub-standard
bricks. Even if problems aren't imminent and new sets hold together
fine, they might show poor fit with spesific previous manufacturers.
There may also be problems that only shows up after some time, like
cracking and discoloration. To me this outsourcing plan seems like one
more unneccesary desperate move that only has potential to worsen a
crisis caused by ealier unneccesarily desperate moves (juniorization,
sub-standard series, computer games, clothes, duplicating Megablok
products etc).


Axel
Norway

Posted by Dean Earley on June 21, 2006, 4:04 am
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axel.REMOVETHIS.eng@frisurf.no wrote:
> Today Lego announced that they'll outsource major parts of production
> from Billund and Enfield to factories in Mexico and eastern Europe,
> run by a company called "Flextronics" (flextronics.com) :
>
http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=pressdetail&contentid=20727&countrycode=2057&yearcode=&archive=false
>
> Is it just me that worries if quality will suffer from this?

I suggest you read http://news.lugnet.com/announce/?n=3254

--
Dean Earley (dean.earley@icode.co.uk)
i-Catcher Development Team

iCode Systems

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