Comment Same Story, Different Year (Score 2, Informative) 371
Between 1988 and 1991 I was running a department whose responsibility it was to set up IBM PS/2 Model 80's for a pharmaceutical firm. We were moving the model 80's so fast that offtimes when the truck came in, they would be moved directly from the truck to the setup room and bypass the stock room entirely. Typical setup day was to get 20-30 machines set up, add on cards installed, Dos installed, and running loop diagnostics overnight for a 24 hour burn in before they were repacked for delivery to persons at the pharmaceutical firm. Our task was to unpack the 80's from the boxes, examine the work order, install the needed PS/2 microchannel adapters in the machine, configure the hardware accordingly (which meant getting the machine to recognize the card(s) using IBM configuration diags) and then format the machines drives and install dos. Loop diags were loaded and the machines were run overnight. Normally if a failure occurs with a factory machine it happens within the first 24 hours that it is run.
Problem was, we were unable to make delivery most of the time, ON time. Not because we were slow or slacking off, but because simply between 10 and 50% of the machines we pulled off of the truck were DOA. I sh** you not. True story: one time we opened two PS/2 Model 80's in the setup department and neither one of them had a motherboard. Systems were due for delivery to researchers the next day.
IBM said (when we called them on this outrage) that since we were a dealer, and since we had accepted delivery of the machines, at that point it was we who were responsible for fixing the machines and getting them out.
Sometimes we had the motherboards or defective parts in stock. Most of the time we didn't. The real fact of the matter was revealed later when we found out that IBM was unable to keep it's manufacturing schedules, and as a result was purposely shipping incomplete or untested hardware directly from the assembly line. We became convinced that in most cases, when a factory machine came in bad to us, that it had in actuality been evaluated as bad, but SHIPPED ANYWAY.
Therefore, to make a long story short, we in the setup department were forced to become an unwilling extension of the IBM factory assembly line in the late 1980's early 1990s.
I like IBM drives. But when a pinhead manager at IBM makes decisions like the IBM model 80 fiasco and the 75GXP HD drive series fiasco, then those pinheads need to be called on this via the public at large, and their asses need to be fired. If the company is made to be accountable for it's shortcomings, then it usually somehow magically and miraculously tends to work it's shortcomings out of it's system. I know for a fact that IBM can produce quality computer subsystems that rival anybody else. The key to keepig that quality up is the public holding them to account for their piss poor managers.
Problem was, we were unable to make delivery most of the time, ON time. Not because we were slow or slacking off, but because simply between 10 and 50% of the machines we pulled off of the truck were DOA. I sh** you not. True story: one time we opened two PS/2 Model 80's in the setup department and neither one of them had a motherboard. Systems were due for delivery to researchers the next day.
IBM said (when we called them on this outrage) that since we were a dealer, and since we had accepted delivery of the machines, at that point it was we who were responsible for fixing the machines and getting them out.
Sometimes we had the motherboards or defective parts in stock. Most of the time we didn't. The real fact of the matter was revealed later when we found out that IBM was unable to keep it's manufacturing schedules, and as a result was purposely shipping incomplete or untested hardware directly from the assembly line. We became convinced that in most cases, when a factory machine came in bad to us, that it had in actuality been evaluated as bad, but SHIPPED ANYWAY.
Therefore, to make a long story short, we in the setup department were forced to become an unwilling extension of the IBM factory assembly line in the late 1980's early 1990s.
I like IBM drives. But when a pinhead manager at IBM makes decisions like the IBM model 80 fiasco and the 75GXP HD drive series fiasco, then those pinheads need to be called on this via the public at large, and their asses need to be fired. If the company is made to be accountable for it's shortcomings, then it usually somehow magically and miraculously tends to work it's shortcomings out of it's system. I know for a fact that IBM can produce quality computer subsystems that rival anybody else. The key to keepig that quality up is the public holding them to account for their piss poor managers.
