... and production still is reliable and moving forward :) (


vloex_

Member
Joined
May 3, 2011
Messages
194
EvilDragon said:
Whew, it has been a long time since I last made
an official newspost.
The reason I didn't post was NOT that things are
not going well - the reason simply was lack of
time due to too much work...
I had a speed-holiday with my girlfriend (one
day Europapark in Rust), and as I had my
Pandora with me, I could make a newspost while
it was her turn driving the car.

This is the first full newspost I made directly on
the Pandora - the keyboard is really working well
So... let's see how everything is coming along,
shall we?


1. The overall production

Overall, things are running pretty smooth and
well.
Over 600 Pandoras have already been
delivered (about 200 of those to long-time
preorders) and we're currently getting a stable
100 per week units.
This is not yet full production speed. New test
PCBs have been successful produced, so once
the next batch of 1000 PCBs is finished, I'm
planning to speed up to about 250 units per
week.
The company COULD produce more per week -
but we also have to sell and ship them, so 250
sounds like a good number to me.
To be honest, I'm pretty happy they didn't do
more than 100 per week up until now - as I am
flooded with work already and I don't plan to
work myself to death...
I've got to catch up a lot of things right now. I
got tons of emails left to reply, I had to work on
the whole shop and order handling system as it
was not suited for so many orders, I got some
RMAs left (though MOST of them have been
done already), etc.
Aditionally, all the pre-assembled units Askarus,
Link and Linux_SWAT created have now been
used up... so I'm currently also preassembling
the next units.
About 250 left to go, from then on, Global
Components will also do the full assembly.
So yeah, there's a lot of work still left for me to
do, but I'm slowly catching up and should have
most of the work done sometime in June.
Then I'm also prepared for a fullspeed
production.


2. Parts and Cases

As usual, the stuff from China is late.
The new cases should've been finished mid-
March, but as usual, they took a while longer.
Good thing I ordered them early... Fatih told me
that they are already on the way.
So within the next few days, we'll get 5000 more
cases. That should be enough
The new cases will also have a new color. It will
be a dark silver, looking a bit like aluminium.
The new paint is way more scratch resistant and
looks a lot better.
As soon as I got it, I'll take some pictures.
We still got some black cases left, so you will be
able to decide what color you want.
We had some issues with the LCD-Cable
company, but Fatih did a good job and we
already got the next batch of cables now.
Another problem solved.
LCDs are becoming a bit harder to get (they're
out of production), but we're not having too big
issues sourcing them right now, so that's fine as
well.
So all in all, besides that all these things are
eating up our time, I don't see any big problems
right now.


3. email backlogs...

Well, you probably already saw it on other
threads here at the boards: my email backlog is
still pretty long... I got about 700 emails left to
reply, and though I take some time to reply to
them each few days, the queue is only slowly
shrinking.
Each day, I receive about 20 more emails I need
to reply... so yep, this is a MASSIVE amount of
work.
Please don't be mad about that - I'll reply to all
of your mails, but with all the other things I have
to do at the same time right now, I'm not that
fast.
I try to look at the mails when they come in and
try to reply to the most important ones, but
sometimes one of these hides itself in the
massive queue.
Once GC fully assembles the units and I've got
less things to organize, this will get better.


4. Where in the world is...

... no, not Carmen Santiego... but we're looking
for someone else.
We all know: It's simply not possible that
NOTHING goes wrong within Pandora-Land... so
yeah, here is something new.
When buying bigger parts in large quantities (like
LCDs and AC adaptors), you either have to
handle the custom declaration yourself when
you want to pick them up at the airport or get
an agent who will do that for you.
Agents are not that expensive - and unlike me,
they know what they're doing (and doing
custom declaration wrong REALLY can cause
issues).
So I hired the company SoundMoves at Munich
Airport to do that for me.
Sent them the import tax fee right away (5000
EUR), picked up the custom documents and the
goods, and everything was fine.
This was in March.
One week ago, I got an invoice from the
customs about these 5000 EUR. Apparently,
they hadn't been paid by SoundMoves... and
SoundMoves are not able to pay them, so I have
to pay them again.
WTH? SoundMoves bankrupt? It's a big
worldwide operating company... handling
transport for musicians like Madonna and U2...
Weird.
As I wasn't able to contact anyone in the Munich
office, I emailed the main office in London.
And things got even weirder then.
They told me the company in Munich is a totally
different company founded by the same CEO.
He simply used the good name of the company
to open up a new one... he even used their
website for this company... even though the
London office tried to tell him to use a different
name.
Whew, what a bloke. But it gets even better.
The London office told me he also owes them
quite a bit of money.
AND they don't even know where he is - they
asked me to tell them his whereabouts in case I
get hold of him.
They only know that he sometimes visits the
office when no one is there to grab the mail and
he most probably is somewhere in Italy... geeez.
Now most of you probably know that it's nigh
impossible to get money back from a company
that has filed for bankruptcy.
However, the case is a bit different here: They
never had the right to use the 5000 EUR from
me for themselves. It was not THEIR money, it
was money they got simply to forward it to
customs.
So this is fraud - which means: the CEO is
personally liable for that.
My lawyer is already working on it and I'll pay a
visit to the police tomorrow to report him.
Then they'll start a search for him...
In Pandora-Land, there's always something
weird happening.
I'm pretty positive we'll get the money back
from him soon, so this is mostly simply
annoying and eating up some more of my
precious time.

So all in all things are still working fine here
I wish it was less work for me, but I'm working
towards that



hm, das heißt dann wohl, dass es auch für mich nicht mehr ewig dauern wird, bis meine pandora eeeendlich wieder zurück bei mir ist. :)
 
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