I. A. 6. Warranty Management

Warranty is a part of doing business. Warranty management is not just the terms listed on the box.

Understanding the entire warranty process, along with your options, permits you to manage your warranty, rather than the other way around.

This is a short overview.

Pieces of a warranty program occur well before the first product ships and may affect the company bottom line for years after you ship your last product.

Brand promise, marketing, finance, customer service are not common areas for a reliability engineer.

Yet, the impact of product failures tends to dominant warranty expenses.

Therefore understanding the many elements around warranty management is essential for any reliability engineer. [Read more…]

The offered warranty is an internal part of many purchase decisions, plus many business models.

While obligatory to offer a warranty, especially for consumer products, the specific terms, duration, and eventual total cost of honoring warranty claims may vary dramatically.

One key to managing the overall warranty expense is to estimate the potential future warranty claims, followed by accurately tracking actual expenses during the warranty period. [Read more…]

A common question concerns the warranty period.

How long should we, the manufacture guarantee that our product will work as expected? Do we include limitations or not? How do we decide? [Read more…]

Here’s a short list of terms related to warranty management. Often is the words we use that matter and understanding the language of warranties is one step in mastering warranty management.

Warranty

A promise made to the buyer of an item that the manufacturer (seller) will repair or replace the item if necessary within a specific time period. [Read more…]

When making a transaction there is an element of trust.

The buyer is trusting you are providing a product that lives up to the claims provided. Neither party wishes to be duped. Yet, we do enter into transactions. We buy stuff.

A few hundred years ago and prior most purchases were from someone you knew, and most likely knew well. It was in the craftsman’s best interest to maintain honest dealing and create quality products. If not, they would enjoy less business. [Read more…]