When developing our next generation of products, we started by asking, “What was the root cause of every product return?”
Our field return rate is around 0.4%, so there aren’t that many to analyse. But over time, every return has been investigated, documented and grouped into failure modes.
Some were genuine hardware failures. Some were installation issues. Some were caused by the product being used in ways we never expected.
The most common issue was SIM insertion. We found three recurring causes: alignment between the SIM holder and enclosure was critical, SIM adapters could damage the connector contacts, and inserting a SIM after the product had been wired was awkward.
The design objective became obvious: eliminate all SIM defects as a failure mode. We look forward to introducing the solution.
We applied the same thinking to every failure mode we identified. Eliminate it through smart design.
Success will be a field return rate of 0.1%
The greatest new features are often the problems that quietly disappear.