Well, Chip is certainly a "real ham", but obviously nobody in a decision
making capacity was listening to him. But the same is true to one extent or
another with ICOM and Kenwood. Too many layers of management that aren't
real hams and have other agenda. They send suits to Dayton but I don't see a
lot of callsigns. Elecraft has real hams at the top, customers can talk
directly to them, and ham radio is their only business. I'm thankful they
also seem to have a good grasp of quality principles. By the way, look where
Chip is now....8^)
73, Jerry K3BZ
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Tippett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jerry Keller (K3BZ)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <elecraft@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 - Another one on order
On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Jerry Keller (K3BZ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I don't think it's a "language barrier" that keeps the Big 3 from taking
an
accurate pulse of the amateur community... at least not in this country.
Nowadays they each have plenty of English speakers in their management.
But
do they have real hams doing their design work? Do they have real hams
getting real-time feedback from the users? Probably not so much. As you
point out, that is what makes Elecraft really special.... we knows 'em,
and
they is us.
Sadly I think it's more than that. I believe it's more
a case of the "big company" syndrome. Customer feedback
gets lost in the process. My personal example is Yaesu and
the infamous FT-1000 family's key clicks. I spoke to Chip K7JA
who was then their main USA contact many times about this issue.
I'm sure Chip understood what I was saying and I'm sure he tried
to communicate with Japan. Yet it took no less than 15 years (!)
for Yaesu to implement the fix in production. Why???? Elecraft
would have done it in a matter of hours!
The really strange thing to me is that most Japanese
companies are zealous practitioners of Deming, kaizen, etc
all of which stress the importance of meeting customer needs
and applying that to continuous process improvement. Something
was badly broken inside the Yaesu company somewhere.
I'll leave you with a favorite quote from Wayne N6KR...it's
paraphrased since I can't find the exact reference:
"It's possible for engineers to understand customers' comments
and ignore them...except around here."
This is truly what sets the company apart and ahead of all others.
73, Bill W4ZV
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