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The Librem 14 is the best laptop we’ve made to date and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from customers so far. The increased demand for the Librem 14, combined with supply chain challenges over the last year has meant delays and longer lead times for new orders. For those of you who have been considering a Librem 14 of your own, good news! We are almost caught up on all Librem 14 orders and have taken measures to ensure we maintain stock from that point onward.
Like many hardware companies, Purism has taken a “Just In Time” manufacturing approach for our products including the Librem laptop line. That means that we make a bit more of a product than we think we need, and schedule the next manufacturing run so that the product arrives in our warehouse “just in time” for us to deplete the previous manufacturing run. In an ideal world that means we never run out of stock, but also never have massive inventories taking up space in our warehouse.
Also like many hardware companies the supply chain woes of the last two years have caused us to rethink this approach. Each time it seemed like we had made enough Librem 14s to catch up to current and projected orders, delays of one kind or another created a new backlog as new orders continued to come in. We’ve decided to scrap “Just in Time” in favor of manufacturing far more Librem 14s than we currently need, and will have our shelves full of Librem 14 stock by the end of the year.
This is fantastic to read. As a proud owner of an L14 - I can say that it was worth the wait. And for future customers not having to wait. Even better.
If one is reading this forum and considering the L14, may I add that this laptop is everything I could ask for. Linux/Qubes without drama. Lots of horsepower. A robust chassis and shell. There’s lots to love.
I’m not buying that (pun intended). To sound any close to convincing you’d need to:
Talk numbers.
Prominently explain your definition of “In Stock” where Lead Time > 0 (because the layman’s definition is that once an order for an “In Stock” item is placed, that item is just grabbed from the shelf and shipped).
Explain why my L5 USA order (“In Stock” with Lead Time 90 days) has been awaiting shipment for 150 days now and counting.
Purism has already stated multiple times this won’t happen.
This actually is explained in the post, albeit in a somewhat convoluted way. Historically they have not kept enough stock to pre-configure the various OS’s a user might select nor ram/storage options and in turn even if they have all the parts on a shelf in their warehouse it still takes time for that final assembly based on the chosen configuration options. The change going forward should lead to having the most common configuration choices pre-assembled though it will be some time before this I’d the case.
This post is about stocking the Librem 14 and in turn has no bearing on the Librem 5 USA. 2 completely different products with 2 different supply chains and 2 different supply models based on this post advertising this change for the Librem 14 but not mentioning changing from JIT manufacturing for any of their other products.
And apparently 2 different definitions of “In Stock” as well — as the one you elaborated does not explain 90 days lead time, let alone 150.
Sure thing this topic is not about L5 USA. It is about why we supposedly should believe that whatever lead time for L14 is stated will be obeyed — notwithstanding how L5 USA lead time is. Different product after all, eh?
and I just placed for my order
we’ll see how things go. I appreciate how tricky it is, but also the work you’re doing to reduce these lead times! I’m hoping I won’t have to wait 8 weeks
There’s nothing to obey. Lead times are an estimate based on the best information we have at a particular point in time. That information includes when shipments of various parts, manufacturing runs, etc. are scheduled to arrive at different facilities, and all the complexities of supply chain logistics. It’s an attempt to predict the future. If the future changes, the prediction could end up being wrong. A delay in any link of the chain can ripple through and cause our previous best estimates to be wrong in the future.
We want our estimates to be as accurate as possible and make a best effort to provide accurate lead times and try to update them as quickly as we reasonably can whenever we get new information that changes things, whether good or bad. In particular the shop page for a particular product is the source of truth, and the lead time table we’ve had at the footer of various recent posts is another area we update at the same time.
In the case of the Librem 14, one of the big drivers for us to change how we approach our inventory is precisely so we avoid the kind of impacts delays in the supply chain can cause. With ample stock, even if a future manufacturing run gets a delay of a few weeks, there is some problem in shipping, or some other issue, it won’t impact our ability to deliver new orders.
We want to extend this approach to the rest of our product line as well, because we feel the same pain as our customers do with how challenging it’s been to keep things in stock, but we aren’t there yet. The Librem 14 is the first to get the benefit of this new approach but it won’t be the last.
Speaking estimations accuracy (and not L5 USA as such), are you saying the 90 days estimate for L5 USA is still the most accurate even though it’s over 150 days now in my case with no explanation why? Are you saying it is still accurate to label such a product “In Stock”?
Or are you saying you have different concepts of estimations accuracy and different “In Stock” definitions for different products?
A fair question. And one, having experienced a hinge issue myself, investigated as thoroughly as possible before purchasing again.
The hinges are performing as expected. Ask me again in a year. Things like this are just long term questions that are difficult to establish a priori. I’ve had similar issues with HP and Dell devices in my time. Sometimes manufacturers really do make bad batches.
That is contrary to my experience. My L13 had the hinges installed too tightly. This led to destruction of the plastic surrounding the hinge screw sockets. I loosened the hinge nuts and glued the screw sockets back down to fix the problem. Hinge is now too loose, but that is better than too tight.
I already have one… it is a beautiful machine.
–once the lead time is updated and accurate on the website.