A consumer unknown (the consumer as potential victim).

[droj]

Since true data isn't available, it's impossible to review the variation in quality control between various manufacturers, although I have certain suspicions. In conversation it soon descends into the realm of popular rumour.

I've always assumed that manufacturers sample their production for this purpose - as a very wild guess, say one product in 50, out of thousands produced? Such a sample would give them a flavour that monitored the success of their processes, from their point of view, factored into their business model. But from the consumer's point of view ... assorted faults will get through the net and sometimes accrue in a single product example.

But you have to wonder whether one maker's QC is better or worse than another's. I won't invoke Canon versus Nikon (I suspect they're on a par), but what about, say, Panasonic versus Olympus? And, given the price, do Leica do exhaustive production checks on every single M-series product?

But if it is generally as I've suggested, is 'good enough' good enough?

 

[MWHCVT]

It probably varies depending on the type of product and more over how long it's been in production, I'd imagine new models would be subjected to great scrutiny in a production ramp up, I'd also expect that pretty much every stage of production of say your high value primes a la 300/2.8, 400/2.8, 500/4, 600/4 & 800/5.6 type lens basically you £10,000 plus will all be QCed maybe I expect too much

 

[droj]

A hirer-out or dealer might have a better perspective than an isolated single consumer, but what you say reinforces my view that only the manufacturer really knows.

 

[woof woof]

Since true data isn't available, it's impossible to review the variation in quality control between various manufacturers, although I have certain suspicions. In conversation it soon descends into the realm of popular rumour...

But if it is generally as I've suggested, is 'good enough' good enough?

Well, just 30 seconds Googling could lead you to a certain photography equipment hire company which provides data on the equipment they handle so I wouldn't say that true data isn't available and there's always the possibility that the kit itself isn't the issue in a percentage of problem situations and that it's user error but getting people to admit that the problem is theirs and not with their kit is another problem.

Personally I've had very few issues with kit of any kind as it's rarely in the interest of companies who care about their name and reputation to knock out crap. However, if you care to dive deeper into any product it's often possible to find that it could be better than it is for little if any extra cost and that does irk me. I used to work in manufacturing and found that some designs by big name companies were lacking and sometimes demonstrated failings at quite a basic level and when talking to the designers it was sometimes clear that they lacked basic knowledge. A higher price is no guarantee of quality or reliability either, IMVHO. These things shouldn't be and two things are needed to prevent less good quality, the will to do things better and the money to enable that will to be carried out but at least today we can Google and read the varied experiences and opinions of others and that can help if you can sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

[MWHCVT]

A hirer-out or dealer might have a better perspective than an isolated single consumer, but what you say reinforces my view that only the manufacturer really knows.

The thing is Canon based on recent speed of announcements seem to be producing roughly 10 million lens a year it's impossible to QC them all but not unreasonable to expect a reasonable level...there's a little on QC in this video if I remember correctly and it's really worth a watch

 

[Nod]

The only manufacturing I've done was small scale and every item got checked. It was making trailer lighting boards so testing was a simple matter of plugging the thing in and turning a rotary switch through "dim, bright, left, right, fog" to make sure the lights all worked and were wired correctly. More complicated items like cameras and lenses would take a lot longer to test even a few of their functions and on a production line should be identical as they roll off so sample testing should be enough but there will always be samples that slip through the net, even on high end products.

 

[george g]

Given the amount of lenses produced and the amount of parts per lens, I would imagine that the manufacturing processes will follow a six sigma process/statistical quality analysis, preventing issues at the end of the line by checking parts at the beginning.

This is purely speculative though, given we don't actually know the internal companies processes.

 

[george g]

having looked a bit deeper, most of the companies do apply a six sigma process for improvement, except however Nikon, who appear to do their own thing...

They are all ISO:9001 certified companies though, which you would expect given their size...