Is it humanly possible to monitor QC on a million watches a year?

[JJ Irani]

Hi guys,

Just wondering....how the hell is it possible for the guys at Rolex, Geneva to monitor almost a million watches a year for Quality Control and perfection???

How on earth can a handful of technicians possibly even find the time to sit and scrutinize carefully each and every damn Rolex that runs off their assembly plant?

So maybe we can excuse them when some of us come across the occasional Rolex with a small flaw on the dial or case.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[STB]

With the premium price we're paying, I think they can afford to do it, and they should.

[JJ Irani]

Originally Posted by STB

With the premium price we're paying, I think they can afford to do it, and they should.

The question here is not what they can afford or what they can't afford.

The question here is the humungousness of the task on hand and how on bloody earth can a handful of people go through a million Rolexes a year.

After all, there's just 24 hours in a day....so where would they find the extra time to carry out this high standard of QC for such a large turnover of watches???

[astcell]

Brietling hypes up that ALL their watches are checked individually, unlike Rolex which selects test models from batches.

[Gedanken]

JJ, at the prices we're paying, they can pay a whole bunch of people to do quality checks. They don't have any excuse.

[syahriltaher]

1,000,000 watches per year means 2,740 watches per day. If you have 50 QC Controllers, it means each one would have to check about 50 watches per day. I think it is still workable, especially for a company as big as Rolex...

Regards,

[JJ Irani]

Originally Posted by syahriltaher

1,000,000 watches per year means 2,740 watches per day. If you have 50 QC Controllers, it means each one would have to check about 50 watches per day. I think it is still workable, especially for a company as big as Rolex...

Regards,

You haven't taken the weekends into consideration!!

[ianmedium]

Originally Posted by astcell

Brietling hypes up that ALL their watches are checked individually, unlike Rolex which selects test models from batches.

They may check them individually shame the same attention is not put into doing something about the hideous looks!

[frostie]

i read somewhere that rolex has 5000 or 6000 employees in their company. It is a very big number for doing quality checks but on the other hand the use a lot of robots as seen in their videos in rolex.com. I believe that it is possible to check so many watches every day.

[padi56]

Originally Posted by syahriltaher

1,000,000 watches per year means 2,740 watches per day. If you have 50 QC Controllers, it means each one would have to check about 50 watches per day. I think it is still workable, especially for a company as big as Rolex...

Regards,

Now that would mean production 24/7 every day of the year would doubt that.But production must be highly automated to make those number production units per year

Originally Posted by frostie

i read somewhere that rolex has 5000 or 6000 employees in their company. It is a very big number for doing quality checks but on the other hand the use a lot of robots as seen in their videos in rolex.com. I believe that it is possible to check so many watches every day.

Well these are the Rolex company figures from late 2006,and as far as workers you are way out.So working on the USA staff figure of 500.I would say there was around 2000 employed in the actual watch production side of Rolex most probably less.



Corporate Address:
PO Box 1755
Rue Francois Dussaud 3
Geneva, CH 121126
Switzerland

Tel: (41) 223082200
Fax: (41) 223002255
Web Site: www.rolex.com

Number of Employees: 3,000
Fiscal Year End Date: 12/31/2006

State Of Inc.: CH
Business Description:
Mfr & Sales of Watches
Import: No
Export: Yes
NAICS Code/Desc:
334518/Watch, Clock, and Part Manufacturing
SIC Code/Desc:
3873/Watches, Clocks, Clockwork Operated Devices & Parts


Personnel - Rolex S.A. (International)
CEO: Patrick Heiniger


Outside Service Firms - Rolex S.A. (International)
Advertising Agency
DDB Paris
Corporate Address:
55 rue d'Amsterdam
Paris, 75008
France

Tel: (33) 1 5332 5669
Fax: (33) 1 5332 6347
Email: betrand.suchet@ddbparis.fr
Web Site: www.ddbparis.fr
JWT
Corporate Address:
1 Knightsbridge Green
London, SW1X 7NW
United Kingdom

Tel: (44) 20 7656 7000
Fax: (44) 20 7656 7010
Web Site: www.jwt.co.uk

Brands & Products - Rolex S.A. (International)
CELLINI - Fine Watches
CELLISSIMA - Watch
DAYTONA - Fine Watches
OYSTER - Fine Watches
ROLEX - Fine Watches

Overview - Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (International)

Corporate Address:
665 5th Ave
New York, NY10022

Tel: (212) 758-7700
Fax: (212) 223-7443
Web Site: www.rolex.com

Number of Employees: 500

Business Description:
Mfr. of Watches
Import: No
Export: No
NAICS Code/Desc:
423940/Jewelry, Watch, Precious Stone, and Precious Metal Merchant Wholesalers
SIC Code/Desc:
5094/Jewelry, Watches, Precious Stones & Precious Metals-Wholesale



Personnel - Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (International)
Chm: Walter Fischer

CFO & Sr VP: Michael Elms



Outside Service Firms - Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (International)
Advertising Agency
JWT U.S.A., Inc.
Corporate Address:
466 Lexington Ave
New York, NY10017-3140

Tel: (212) 210-7000
Fax: (212) 210-7299
Email: request@jwt.com
Web Site: www.jwt.com



Brands & Products - Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (International)
OYSTER COLLECTION - Watches


Hierarchy - Rolex Watch U.S.A., Inc. (International)

[astcell]

Do any watches NOT pass? I mean with interchangebale parts I'd think they all just work. I wonder what the failure rate is.

And then if one does fail what do they do with it? Take it apart and find the one offending part to replace it?

[padi56]

Originally Posted by astcell

Do any watches NOT pass? I mean with interchangebale parts I'd think they all just work. I wonder what the failure rate is.

And then if one does fail what do they do with it? Take it apart and find the one offending part to replace it?

If by failure Robert you mean like at the COSC testing and this is a direct quote from Watchbore its a few years old but estimates that at least 15,000 Rolex movements failed in 2001-2. According to Rolex, the failed rejects are re-regulated or fixed, and sent back to COSC until they pass.Rolex Quote. "We don’t use COSC to tell us how good our movements are," said a source deep inside the Wilsdorf Rolex foundation. "We test them ourselves. All we want is the chronometer certification, it’s only now for marketing.

[SPACE-DWELLER]

Apparantly, QC DOES fail sometimes at Rolex!

Remember those Sub and SD dials posted here some time ago where the "D" in "Certied" was badly printed, guys???!!!

Also, Wandy can tell us about a screw inside the 3135 movement of his Sub Date that was badly countersunk, resulting in bad timing.

[Alex Stylianou]

For What We Pay , They must , but who knows

[roadcarver]

Rolex behind the name are just people, and people makes mistakes. If they were perfect, there wouldn't be a customer service desk for Rolex.

[idoitsavant]

No matter how good the quality or how expensive the product is, the product can still fail.
I work in a manufacturing and repair environment. This always happens no matter how many people inspect the products. There is always potential damage inflicted on the products during shipping and handling OUTSIDE Rolex. Anything can happen.

[nko51]

Not a 100% on every watch.

[Alcan]

Apparently not:

http://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=17930

[supermarz]

i for some reason are always under the impression that the operation and qc in rolex are more machinely involved rather than in contact with human ..well other than their assembly department i guess...

if u looked at the clips at rolex website they sounds like they emphasize and relly alot on their machinery instead of ...well human touch....

[jac67]

Originally Posted by JJ Irani

Is it humanly possible to monitor QC on a million watches a year?

Simple answer NO.

This has been proven recently here with a few faulty dials.

But hey, for around 850,000+ watches per year as well as the "human element", I suppose a few will undoubtably fall through the system.


John.

[SPACE-DWELLER]

Originally Posted by Spacedweller

Apparantly, QC DOES fail sometimes at Rolex!

Remember those Sub and SD dials posted here some time ago where the "D" in "Certied" was badly printed, guys???!!!

Also, Wandy can tell us about a screw inside the 3135 movement of his Sub Date that was badly countersunk, resulting in bad timing.

THIS is the dial I was talking about:

http://www.rolexforums.com/showthrea...024#post247024


But as you can see, Rolex corrected it!

[tonelar]

i think Rolex uses these guys... they're checking almost 2750 watches per day.

[wandyprawira]

When you're talking about a mass-pro production facility, you don't do quality check on each of the products being produced. But instead, you do what's called sampling. Normally they random sampling several pieces from every batch they produce and sometimes increase the number of sampling if they make any changes in either one of the 4M (Man, Machine, Methods, Material).

In order to it properly they implement what's called Total Quality Management could be in the form of ISO9001. It's a built-in quality control system within every personnel in the factory. The main mindset they have with the built-in QC is : "Never pass defective product to the next process and never accept defective product from the previous process".

[wandyprawira]

Oh and one more thing. I read in an article about chronometer, the failure ratio of Rolex being failed to COSC test is around 2.2%.

It is kind of normal for failure ratio/defective ratio of a production run to be around 2%. If it's more than that then there's something wrong and the guy in Quality Assurance Dept. will be shouting everywhere in the factory.

[JJ Irani]

Originally Posted by wandyprawira

When you're talking about a mass-pro production facility, you don't do quality check on each of the products being produced. But instead, you do what's called sampling. Normally they random sampling several pieces from every batch they produce and sometimes increase the number of sampling if they make any changes in either one of the 4M (Man, Machine, Methods, Material).

In order to it properly they implement what's called Total Quality Management could be in the form of ISO9001. It's a built-in quality control system within every personnel in the factory. The main mindset they have with the built-in QC is : "Never pass defective product to the next process and never accept defective product from the previous process".

Good answer, Wandy...thanks!!

[oldman2005]

With an engineering background, all I can say is there will be bad watches, you can try to reduce but you can't get rid of it when you're making 1 million watch a year.

[Flyjet601]

Originally Posted by wandyprawira

When you're talking about a mass-pro production facility, you don't do quality check on each of the products being produced. But instead, you do what's called sampling. Normally they random sampling several pieces from every batch they produce and sometimes increase the number of sampling if they make any changes in either one of the 4M (Man, Machine, Methods, Material).

In order to it properly they implement what's called Total Quality Management could be in the form of ISO9001. It's a built-in quality control system within every personnel in the factory. The main mindset they have with the built-in QC is : "Never pass defective product to the next process and never accept defective product from the previous process".

I agree. Having helped impliment ISO9001 in a previous job, it is all about process. If the process works, the result is predicatable. The process is checked and re checked by all involved....to be rendered full proof(in theory).
And what makes anybody think there is only a handfull of QC guys at Rolex. I would imagine that everyone involved in the process is QC...all employees.

Having said that...my new Anniv. TT GMT II has a distorted cyclops date magnifier so nothing is perfect.