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Manufacturing defects contribute to Sony woes |
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Oct 27, 2006 at 10:22 AM |
Rarely have microelectronic manufacturing defects played such a public role in one company's financial woes.
Sony's just-announced second-quarter earnings took a big hit, due in part to its recall of some 9.6 million lithium-ion laptop batteries as well as pushouts on both its Blu-Ray disc player and, more importantly, its flagship Playstation 3 (PSP3) device.
Although the company says it is not completely sure that short-circuit-inducing metallic microparticles---resulting from a lack of rigorous contamination and quality control practices in the production line---are the cause of the Li-ion battery overheating problems, that is the consensus view. Sony says the QC problems have been corrected, but it will struggle to produce the required supplies of replacement batteries.
As for the delays in the Blu-Ray players and PSP3s, both may have resulted from the company's problems in meeting production targets for its gallium-nitride blue laser diodes. Sony engineers have evidently had difficulties transferring the GaN crystal growth process from small development-level reactors to larger systems for volume ramps. Reports have circulated suggesting that defects caused by the lattice mismatch between the substrate and active layers may have had a deleterious effect on diode yields.
Will manufacturing defectivity and process variations have a continuing impact on a bellwether company's brand erosion? In Sony's case, the customer-jury is still out.
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