I agree with this statement, but we don’t know if that’s the case. Hence, conjecture.
Like the use of the term “apologist.”
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Gotcha. For some reason I thought this was known.
Well, let me qualify by saying I don’t recall having ever received that information. I’m hardly an authority though.
In many cases the supply chains for components for L5 and L5USA are different, by design. We have tried as much as possible for L5USA to source from US companies and ideally with components that were themselves made in the USA. Of course this isn’t always possible for each component, but we make an effort. It has meant we had to take time to build up a separate supply chain for these components for L5USA.
Another factor I think many folks haven’t considered when it comes to the supply chain crisis and Just In Time production is that in the past, if a particular supplier has a problem or there are other delays, you could often just go elsewhere for a particular component and still hit your timelines. These days it’s much more difficult to recover from a hiccup in the supply chain. Sometimes none of the alternative sources have supply either, because everyone bought up what they could (and in some cases are reselling it for a 2x-10x markup on the spot market).
Remember that run on toilet paper/sanitizing wipes/hand cleaner? Before that happened, if your main store ran out of those things you could just go to another store and get it. When those items had a supply chain crisis, all your local stores were out, as well as online sources as everyone bought up what they could. It took many months (I think a year for sanitizing wipes), but now those things are back in stock in reasonable supplies so you can just drop into a local store and buy them. Imagine that situation but for random electronics components, and extended out over 2 years, and you have an idea of what it’s been like. It’s starting to get better though.
As I mentioned in a different reply another factor at play here is order volume. The mass-produced L5 requires higher quantities of components to start up a manufacturing run. The CPU shortage meant that CPUs we needed in those quantities had long lead times. They are now starting to trickle in, in larger quantities which is good, and if things go according to schedule we should be able to catch up to all L5 orders by the end of the year.
The L5USA is a small batch product. It has a much smaller queue, and we can start up manufacturing runs for that with lower quantities of components. In many cases we placed orders for components for both products through their separate supply chains at similar times, and they are arriving when they arrive. We have also sometimes been able to source parts in smaller quantities on the spot market as they come up (usually at a much higher price) which has helped us make more L5USA (and L5 too as we have found some CPUs on the spot market for L5 through its supply chain as well). These L5USA quantities would be a drop in the bucket if they were to be diverted to L5 instead of L5USA where they were intended (not to mention the logistics of shipping them to those facilities) and often still wouldn’t be enough to start up a production run. Mass production is the solution to fulfilling all the L5 orders.
We don’t provide numbers or discuss our finances as a general policy, which you know. So you can make any conjecture you’d like and say it’s true if we don’t provide numbers, but we won’t provide numbers regardless.
It’s true “close” is subjective. If an estimate is vague it’s because we don’t have enough information to make it more specific. I feel confident enough to lower the lead time for new orders to 60 days, and feel that’s conservative, but because there are still unknowns I can’t be much more specific than that. It really bothers us when we make an estimate that turns out to be inaccurate later on. We are trying very hard not to do that. This is also why we haven’t given most L5 customers an updated shipping estimate yet. After all of the problems with estimates in the past we really do want new estimates we give to be accurate. As we feel we can give accurate estimates to folks we will update them though.
We wanted to provide an update to L5USA customers in this case as there is progress and everyone has told us they want us to provide more updates, not fewer ones, even if we don’t have all the information. It is unreasonable to expect us to have an exact date where we will hit shipping parity because we can’t predict the future. It’s always a factor of new orders coming in the future (unknown, but can make rough estimates based on past trends), past orders we need to ship (known), the speed we can ship through them (relatively known at this point), and in the case enough new orders have come in that we need to make even more phones to hit shipping parity, the shipping times for components we need for those manufacturing runs and the time to make those phones (known relatively well at this point as we have refined the L5USA production process, but could change w/ shipping delays or other unforeseen factors).
At this point we have a pretty good handle on this, which is why we shortened the lead time to 60 days. We think we’ll have sufficient quantities of L5USA at that point not just to handle existing orders and get us to shipping parity, but also handle a reasonably-sized influx of new orders with plenty of head room so that we can maintain stock from that point on and ship orders within 10 business days.
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Here is what I don’t understand, and maybe you could elucidate it for me @Kyle_Rankin. For close to a year (if not longer), the projected shipping time on the website for the Librem 5 USA has been consistently listed as 60 days. Yet with few exceptions, that hasn’t been the case. And if I’m understanding this post correctly, the hope is that all L5 USA will be shipped in the next six weeks or so, and THEN, there will be enough components for held stock to fulfill new orders in about 10 business days.
My confusion isn’t about why there have been delays in fulfillment. Much of that is understandable, given the current climate. What isn’t understandable is why there have been zero updates on the public website about the status or even existence of delays, nor changes to that 60 day availability listing. Meaning that if someone ordered a device in August of 2021 and expected to have it in October, they will actually be happy to have it in June. Even someone who ordered in January is still facing a 3x longer delay (best case scenario), than what has been listed on the sales page.
It would be helpful if you could explain why projected ship dates were never changed on the product ordering dates and what you will be doing moving forward to show that estimated fulfillment dates are actually realistic.
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Thanks for asking, lead times are tricky. I’ll try to explain why.
For what it’s worth, we just shortened it to 60 days from 120 days, where it has been for quite some time. Throughout the fall we hit that issue exactly as you describe: a customer placed an order with some long lead time (between 90 or 120 days in the fall, I don’t have at hand the exact times we changed things), then we hit one of a series of internal delays that delayed their order past the lead time we predicted. Yet we didn’t change the lead time on the site. Why?
The lead time in the shop is an estimate on when we believe an order placed today will ship. For orders with a backlog, it’s an attempt to predict that ever-elusive shipping parity date. We review those numbers periodically and ask the question: “Would an order placed today ship within that time?” If based on all the information we have, we believe it would, the lead time stays the same. If we think it would ship significantly sooner, we shorten it, and if we have hit a delay that makes us think it should be longer, we extend it.
What happened with L5USA during the fall is not a single delay, but a series of different delays spread out over a number of months (component shipping delays among other things). So a particular delay would hit that would affect existing L5USA orders, let’s say it would delay them by a few weeks. At that point we’d look at the information we had on the nature of the delay, when it would be resolved, etc. and ask “Would an L5USA order placed today ship in 90 days? 120 days?” whatever the lead time was. Usually the delay wasn’t significant enough we felt it would affect new order lead time so we kept the lead time. At one point we did extend it to 120 days because we felt that was more accurate.
Fast forward a few weeks and then some new delay we didn’t anticipate would surface that would affect past orders. Again we’d review the delay, our info on when it would be resolved, and the current lead time and decide whether it was still accurate. For the most part we felt it was so we didn’t change it. I completely understand why L5USA customers were frustrated, we were frustrated too.
Fast forward to this week. We reviewed all the information we have, in particular in light of the fact that we had contacted all orders that required shipping updates (in case their address changed since they placed the order some time ago). The next batch of orders we would ship out after this batch would just ship out, they were recent enough that we didn’t need to ask for updated shipping from the customer. Based on that, combined with our L5USA stock, shipping throughput, number of orders, L5USA production schedule for the next month, etc. we felt confident enough to shorten the lead time from 120 days to 60. That means we feel confident that an order placed today would ship by July 16. Many internal signs are pointing to the actual lead time being shorter, but again, we are trying to pad things and be conservative, because there always seem to be new unforeseen shipping delays or other issues.
An “X days from today” style of lead time naturally shifts ahead each day. Could we pick an actual date instead (say Q3 2022 or July 2022)? We could and sometimes we have in the past, yet we found when we did that, especially when the date was more specific, we had to keep on top of it and update it much more often so it wasn’t inaccurate, as each month went by. We found it was more likely to be inaccurate, so we shifted to a sliding window.
Of course this approach is imperfect too, and it can lead to the kind of situation we hit this past fall. We don’t want to do that any more if we can help it, as it’s frustrating for us and it’s frustrating for you. This is why we are trying to move each product away from Just In Time fulfillment to a model where we hold a lot of stock. This is how we are ultimately going to resolve this issue and make things stabler and more predictable.
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Thanks for that response, appreciate it.
May 11, 2022:
Any update on Librem 5 USA shipping parity?
We are getting super close. It took a bit longer to refine the manufacturing process to improve our yields for the latest batch but we’ve made all of the phones for normal outstanding orders up to shipping parity and are shipping through those this week, and all that’s remaining is the anti-interdiction orders, which I’ve been contacting customers about to coordinate the steps.
If you define shipping parity as “the moment that an order placed today will ship within the standard 10 business days” then I think we’d be there within a few days as we would be able to complete the remaining backlog in that time. If you define it as “the moment all backlogged orders are filled” then it’s murkier because new orders are coming in all the time, but even in that case I’d say possibly add a week. That said, I will probably hold off on announcing it publicly until a bit after that to ensure we have some wiggle room for the influx of new orders we’re expecting.
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What about us second class, non-USA Librem 5 customers who placed our orders long before there was such a thing as a Libren 5 USA? How long will it take to reach shipping parity on those phones?
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Wrong topic for that question.
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I asked the same question on May 13th and it was off topic then too. Months go by and it’s still not a topic that Purism likes to discuss since there are no good answers for those people. Purism builds a business based on a given price for their product. When momentum builds, instead of rewarding their early adopters who paid in advance, they double the price, create “new supply lines” and put their earlier customers to the back of the line so that Purism can collect twice as much on each sale instead of delivering on previous commitments. “Separate Supply Lines” I guess that Purism has to say something when people call them out on these dishonest tactics.
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No, not off topic. Wrong topic.
Please let’s not derail this topic. There are many other topics in which you could ask or indeed you can start a new topic and ask your question there.
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+1 I’ve waited for more than 3 years and don’t wait any longer.
Now I bought a (rather new) Sony Xperia 10 III for 230 € and a license of https://sailfishos.org/ for it.
I’m rather happy to have a “daily driver” without a Google-Account, nice linux-based System and furthermore a helpful forum.
Sailfish is sufficient for me in all belongs, even if there are simple things, which could work better.
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Hi @Kyle_Rankin,
your answer here has nothing to do with my question from the topic about the ethical marketing.
My question was not about why it takes so long. My question was also not about the current situation and improvements. So you answered here different questions.
My question was why did Purism used the wording “In Stock” for a product that you don’t have in a ready to be shipped to new customers stock.
I am not criticising the delay itself. I am just perceiving the wording as misleading. I would have been totally satisfied if you used a different wording.
My logical chain is the following.
- When one uses a word in an unconventional sense this is misleading.
- Who is mislead? The potential customers.
- When potential customers are mislead, this could be qualified as unethical marketing, couldn’t it?
=> Hense I think my post was in the correct topic in the first place.
Where do you think I am wrong in my logic?
Why do you defend the wording “In Stock” instead of just using a wording that would be universally understandable and would not lead to misunderstandings.
I am not telling it to be mean. It is about honest constructive feedback from the community.
The second feedback on the topic is about expectations management. I have the subjective feeling that Purism pumps up the expectations of the potential customers a little bit too much which leads to some frustrated customers.
In my opinion PinePhone manages expectations a little bit better because they are very clear that their devices are not for everyone and have limitations.
Great product experience is not only about a great product, but about a fit between expectations and experience. If the expectations are too high, people are not going to value the product even if the product itself is great.
And this topic has in my opinion also something to do with the topic of ethical marketing. Because one could debate if it is not more ethical to do everything possible to not raise unrealistic expectations.
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I assure you we aren’t trying to be confusing or misleading, it’s just that “In Stock” has nuanced meanings in a Just In Time manufacturing world.
In the past when products were fulfilled using “Just in Time” manufacturing, something was “In Stock” if we had it physically in the warehouse at that time and were shipping through the product, and would have a particular customer’s order it in the warehouse to ship, within the lead time for the product (normally 10 business days, but for some products like L5USA we extended that). This allowed us to create a steady fulfillment stream without having to have massive inventory taking up space in our warehouse.
So if for instance, we shipped through the current supply of Minis in the warehouse on a Friday, but we manufactured a new batch and it was going to arrive the following Wednesday, that would fit within our standard 10 business day lead time and we wouldn’t change it from “In Stock” to “Backordered” for the weekend. For products with longer lead times (because of supply chain issues that caused components themselves to have longer lead times for future orders we were manufacturing), but that we have produced and were shipping through, we’d increase the lead time to reflect that, but retain “In Stock”. We moved the server line to “Out of Stock” when we not only ran out of existing stock, but were unable to source new stock for it. One exception to this approach is the L5, which we have listed on backorder just because of the very long lead time, even though we do have L5s we are shipping through each week.
Fast forward to today, and the supply chain crises over the past few years have demonstrated all the problems with Just In Time. As we have written about a few times over the past year, we are moving away from “Just in Time” to a model where we hold much higher inventories, starting with Librem 14 and soon will include the Librem 5 USA as well, as we are about to catch up to all existing orders and hopefully hold enough stock after that (unless we get a giant flood of orders unexpectedly) that we will be able to maintain that stock for some time.
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Respectfully, I can find no evidence (beyond Purism’s own statements) to support this claim.
The closest I can find is one of the free dictionaries idioms for “in stock” to mean “Currently available to purchase (in a store).” And that only works when ignoring the “(in a store)” segment.
All other uses, references, and definitions I have ever found define in stock to be on hand or otherwise in physical possession of and not in transit.
I cannot say whether or not Purisms intent was to be confusing by using a non-standard definition, but I can say that it was a foreseeable consequence and continued use after it has been pointed out on numerous occasions is not evidence in Purisms favor.
This would be transparent to the customer and appears to be deflecting from the criticism by pointing to a completely different scenario to justify the criticized use arguably a straw man.
I would scale this back in that I think “everything possible” is overly restrictive, though I agree with the overall point that expectation management is a part of marketing and should be done ethically as well.
Thank you @Kyle_Rankin now I finally understand what you mean by “In Stock”.
That you have units “In Stock”, but these units could have already been ordered by somebody else so that a new order might need to wait for new units to arrive.
I believe you that it not intentional to confuse people. Still the result is that there are people that got confused.
I would personally view any unit that has already been ordered as “gone” even if the unit is physically still there and not been brought to the post office yet. People are interested in the units that you have available to sell to them and not in the units that have already been sold to someone else.
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I have seen many products listed as “in stock” but that won’t ship from the same country I’m in for something like 2 weeks. It could very well be that they use the same listing logic that is explained here.
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I’ll take that new, to me, information at face value and accept there is one example that may be construed to support the claim.
That could just as easily be explained as in stock in a warehouse in another country and shipping between warehouses takes time. While I would consider this potential equally deceptive if not disclosed to the customer, the experience is not compelling evidence of JIT manufacturing using this definition of in stock.