There’s nothing to obey. Lead times are an estimate based on the best information we have at a particular point in time.
Regardless of how you are using the phrase “lead time” (which, in my opinion, doesn’t match a common sense reading of the phrase), this contradicts a response I got from a Purism support technician regarding the shipment of my Librem 5 USA (which is listed as being “in stock” and I ordered about a month ago):
Hello John,
The current lead time is in fact up to 90 days so we can guarantee we
will deliver your Librem 5 USA by early february.
We might be able to ship it earlier but we can’t guarantee it at the moment.
If “lead time” is just an estimate, how can this support technician “guarantee we will deliver your Librem 5 USA by early february,” particularly in light of the fact that some people have been told their Librem 5 USA will be shipped within 90 days and they’re still waiting LONG after that?
Guarantee might have not been the best word for them to use, since they can’t predict the future and sometimes things happen later, that affects lead time.
Regardless, I’m frustrated that this thread has been hijacked, yet again by “where’s my phone” support requests, despite the fact I explicitly asked everyone not to do so at the very beginning of my post. If you want to start a new thread debating/complaining/discussing Librem 5 or Librem 5 USA shipping schedules you are free to do so, but please keep this thread on topic, which is supposed to be a discussion thread about the linked blog post about the current approach to Librem 14 supply.
If we can’t keep the thread on topic I will either lock it or just start deleting off-topic comments, I haven’t decided which yet.
@Kyle_Rankin you may be right about comments being off topic. But this keeps happening (which I’ve noticed also) for a reason. Instead of working so hard to suppress people’s comments and right off their concerns by deleting comments, why not spend that time addressing these situations with Purism teams teams directly? You seem to already agree that what the reps are communicating to customers aren’t accurate so why not work to get the communication accurate and consistent?
Discussion forums are filled with people–not perfect robotic machines that put every comment in the perfect place. It’s only natural for people to comment on what a topic may be at the top of their minds, which isnt always directly related to original post.
I’m not writing off concerns, I’m simply saying that a discussion thread for this blog post about the Librem 14 is the wrong place for someone to complain about the delay in getting their Librem 5 USA. The purpose of these threads is to provide the community a place to discuss the topics in a particular blog post. I had to get stricter about keeping these discussions on topic because literally every one turned into a “where’s my phone?” post or a support request, regardless of topic, which drowned out any actual on-topic discussion, and members of the forum were (rightly) upset about it.
I’d rather not have a meta-conversation on why I want this thread to be on topic. Again, people are free to post their own topics to discuss what they want, and it’s not unreasonable for me to ask that people respect my wish that my own threads be on topic.
Keywords do not always indicate what is actually being talked about.
Once again, although my comments above do relate to the L5 USA, they are focused on the Purism’s terms and manners around maintaining stock, lead times, promises vs estimations etc. Which is directly on topic here as one of the main points of the title post is basically "Hey we’re maintaining stock now, go buy L14!" — to which I say “Sorry guys I can’t trust you as your words about maintaining stock in case of L5 USA prove to be false/misleading”. So the central issue here is how to trust such inconsistent terms/definitions/statements, not “where’s my phone” as some claim.
If you are concerned about Purism’s use of the term “in stock” or want to express your frustration about delays with your phone order, go start another thread.
This thread is essentially an announcement that Purism changed their approach to making the Librem 14, which obviously entails changes in “maintaining stock, lead times, promises vs estimations etc” - not merely a change in how they estimate things.
So when it comes to comparing phones and laptops, there is no inconsistency and there is no “central issue” because they are two different products with two different approaches to production.
If Purism had previously announced a similar change to phone manufacturing and failed to improve delivery times, I would understand the skepticism and distrust. But that isn’t the case. As far as I know, it’s the first time that Purism has significantly altered their manufacturing strategy (directly addressing the supply chain breakdown, which I believe was the primary cause of the order delays this past year).
That said, I’m all for Kyle deleting the off-topic posts on this thread - including this post - and if you want, we can go to another thread and argue the finer points of how a coherent argument is generally a better approach to making a point even if rhetoric is more effective at hijacking a discussion.
Exactly this. We have been trying for a long time to resolve these issues and all of the unpredictability and fluctuations in availability we’ve been having. It frustrates us just as much, if not more, than individual customers when delays pop up unexpectedly and throw all our estimates off and disappoint our customers.
Given it seems like these kinds of fluctuations in supply and shipping issues as well aren’t short-term but will likely continue for at least another year (in general for the semiconductor market as a whole, from all the indications we have) before things start to stabilize, we decided to change how we approach supply to try to resolve this constant problem of maintaining stock.
This required a lot of up-front investment which we made some time ago, and we’ve taken this approach beyond just the Librem 14, it’s just that the Librem 14 is the first to see the benefit, due to it (fortunately at the moment) having a stabler supply chain (CPU supply in the past has been a concern) with shorter lead times for components.
So this blog post serves both to announce the good news about Librem 14 supply specifically as well as to announce the new approach overall.
Oh, that’s nice. I read this initially as the Librem14 being more of the test line rather than an overall change.
I do hope that when supply chains are “stable” again this is remembered and some amount of stock is always kept in favor of a buffer over only JIT manufacturing.
I suspect this is something you are going to see industry-wide. It’s one of those pivotal generational events with ripple effects that continue as long as the people who lived through it are alive. There are massive investments happening right now across industries to address these problems including building new factories, fabrication facilities, the agreement between Ford and a semiconductor supplier, etc. so it’s not just us.
Think of it like all those folks who lived through the Great Depression in the United States (or WW2 food rationing in the UK) insisting that their children always clean their plates and don’t waste food.
I have a relevant question!
Does the latest batch being manufactured, as described in the linked post, address the high-pitched whine that changes with keyboard backlight status as reported elsewhere? (as opposed to the various other high-pitched whines emanating from this message board…
Thanks for the data point! For reference, here is the main thread discussing it:
It would be good to get confirmation from someone at Purism that they have made some sort of change to fix this problem. Otherwise, we can’t be sure that it isn’t just a situation where some laptops have the problem, some don’t (e.g., @flopsy was merely luck to get one that doesn’t whine).
That’s quite the review on reddit! I may be luckier than you originally thought.
Not only does my back light not whine but my touchpad doesn’t feel like sandpaper, my keyboard isn’t mushy, my keys don’t double type, there is no electrical hum, the power adapter is as robust as any I have used in the past 30 years and the processor/RAM are fast enough to run 20 VMs in Qubes with no noticeable lag. I feel like a damn leprechaun!!!
He continued, saying “the Librem 14 is the first to see the benefit, due to it (fortunately at the moment) having a stabler supply chain (CPU supply in the past has been a concern) with shorter lead times for components… So this blog post serves both to announce the good news about Librem 14 supply specifically as well as to announce the new approach overall.”
@Kyle_Rankin With all due respect then, please answer the on topic request which has been posed by many people including in this thread. Namely, precisely define in stock as pertains to Purism inventory; i.e. do you mean the components are physically on a Purism shelf or a supplier/manufacturer’s shelf?
Since no details are given for delays of in stock items even MONTHS AFTER receiving the address confirmation email stating the Librem 14 would ship within 10 days, it is hard to believe that in stock means inventory on a Purism shelf.
“In stock” in the context of our past “Just in Time” approach to fulfillment meant that we had the particular item on shelves in our fulfillment center and were shipping through them, and would fulfill new orders “just in time” based on the lead time estimate (ideally our standard 10-business day window but with the current supply chain woes, as you know, lead times for some of our products are much longer). Items are listed as “backordered” when we don’t have them on our shelves and the next just-in-time manufacturing run won’t arrive at the fulfillment center within our lead time.
But as the article discusses, and you allude to, relying on Just in Time for fulfillment works until it doesn’t. What we’ve seen, and what’s been so challenging, is that when a link in the chain breaks, it ends up breaking these past estimates and causing delays, without much cushion to absorb that. When you combine that with new orders that keep coming in, it sometimes creates a backlog. When these things have happened we try our best to update our lead times, etc. to account for it, but we can’t go back in the past and update the estimates that are now no longer accurate.
This is the reason for this new approach this article is talking about. Instead of relying on a steady stream of just-in-time manufacturing runs to stay in stock, we are going to start maintaining much more inventory than we need so that we can better absorb any future disruptions. Very soon we will be all caught up on the Librem 14 backlog, at shipping parity, and if it weren’t for the two-week office closure at the end of the year we would have already updated and shortened the Librem 14 lead time to be less than 6 weeks.
By the beginning of the year the Librem 14 stock won’t rely on just in time. We have invested to ensure the rest of the products take the same approach (as supplies permit) but with varying lead times and challenges getting components, but it will take longer for some products to get to that point.
