Panasonic and its Customers Care Where Technology is Made
Recently, I came across an intriguing article in InformationWeek, titled, “Do We Care Where Technology Products Are Made?” The author, Jonathan Salem Baskin, poses important questions about manufacturing, outsourcing and its importance and effects for end-users.
At Panasonic, we think it makes a significant difference how and where technology is made. For example, the reputation of our Toughbook® portable computers stands on our ability to deliver the most reliable mobile devices in the marketplace. We can do this because we do not outsource manufacturing like virtually all of our competitors choose to. We don’t believe that a contract manufacturer is as invested in product quality. The price-pressure they’re under in an increasingly competitive and commoditized market means they have to find whatever savings they can to retain the business and be profitable. We think that this is one of the main reasons there are such extremely high rates of hardware failure within the notebook industry.
Panasonic designs and develops our machines in-house, from pre-production to final product assembly, allowing us to respond to our customers’ needs and maintain strict quality control along every step of the process. While many vendors continue to focus on cutting corners to maintain profitability, our attention to detail bears the fruit of low failure rates and long-term customers. Our products are built to withstand the tests our customers put them through-in both extreme situations and in mainstream business use-and experience strongly suggests that manufacturing control is critical to this. We stand behind the integrity of our machines by publishing our failure rates.
Have you ever found a device sold by one of our competitors but built by some third party that lasted as long or was as reliable as your Toughbook computer?
