251

Re: Orders Shipping List

Rincewind wrote:

Guys, is it possible (although unlikely) that all the orders before danny's were for "expert" models (mine is) and they ran out of cases so they are shipping the "naked" (=pro and basic) printers first? They just replied to a complaint of mine that some delays are due to suppliers not delivering them items... I don't believe it's a response to complaints, I should be printing for months now if those worked smile

F

When I got my printer, I ordered the expert and I didn't get a case or door, I assumed that they were waiting on them.

I know a few people have gotten their printers with their case and door already included.

252

Re: Orders Shipping List

Rincewind wrote:

Guys, is it possible (although unlikely) that all the orders before danny's were for "expert" models (mine is) and they ran out of cases so they are shipping the "naked" (=pro and basic) printers first? They just replied to a complaint of mine that some delays are due to suppliers not delivering them items... I don't believe it's a response to complaints, I should be printing for months now if those worked smile

F

Nope,
Check the costs. I ordered the expert model. I specifically want a case and a door so my cats can't "help" with the printing.

I'll try and find the tracking details tomorrow. (When I'm not on my phone).

I suspect it's not that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
I suspect it's a mistake.
Although I was told by Clifford when I emailed on Monday that "my" printer was being built this week and should ship this week.
I then read what John said (see first impressions thread) and thought.
Well once again I am disappointed, but not surprised.

As I said, I'll find out in a couple of weeks when I get my customs card!

253

Re: Orders Shipping List

I have created a table on the wiki for a printers shipping list, much appreciated to add your information there!

http://www.soliwiki.com/Printers_Shipping

254

Re: Orders Shipping List

I also ordered the expert model and got it 2 month ago without the case and assumed that they made a mistake.
I was told that the case should ship separately.
That is ok to send the printer without the case until the manufacturing is stable.
I hope they will send it soon.

255

Re: Orders Shipping List

Brad, add a field for serial number.  With serial numbers, we can estimate the rate of production and relationship between invoice numbers and actual units.  Without serials, it's all guesses.

Also a field for total weeks waited, so we can see any trends developing in lead times.

Also is it easy to insert fields so people can place their entry by date ordered?

256

Re: Orders Shipping List

The table can be tweaked as needed, it can be easily changed and moved around by editing the wiki page by whoever wants to add their information. You can also sort the tables by clicking the header on each column.

Changes you suggested have been made.

257

Re: Orders Shipping List

Brad I think it's awesome you're including this information in the wiki. I hope it cuts down on the confusion and helps us trend the production rate a little easier. More information with less confusion is always a good thing.

258

Re: Orders Shipping List

Thanks, that's what we're all working towards... something easy to understand so others can try to get a good idea of when to expect their printers! smile

259

Re: Orders Shipping List

I've filled out the table at the Wiki with all the "Shipped" posts I could find.  If your printer has arrived, please go and fill in the serial number, using 4 digits so the sorting works properly.  Look for your username, and if you don't see it, please enter your info.

Just register for an account, then hit the edit link at the top of the page.  Find the last line of info in the table, copy and paste it to the next line, and the replace the fields with your own data.

If you aren't comfortable editing the wiki, just post your serial here.

260

Re: Orders Shipping List

Invoice No.: 0753
Order ID: #1656
Date Added: 28/05/2012   

Status:shipped

I hadn't checked for a few days .. i will not add to wiki till i find a tracking number and confirm it all..

261

Re: Orders Shipping List

IanJohnson wrote:

I've filled out the table at the Wiki with all the "Shipped" posts I could find.  If your printer has arrived, please go and fill in the serial number, using 4 digits so the sorting works properly.  Look for your username, and if you don't see it, please enter your info..

Thanks for this, I added my data. Just some clarification: the shipped date is the date when the order is marked as "shipped" or when it actually arrives? And the Order ID is it really so or should it be the Invoice number?

F

262 (edited by Jon 2012-10-18 08:12:24)

Re: Orders Shipping List

Ian,

I also compiled a list like this, I decided not to publish it because I felt that some people may not want to have that level of exposure.  Granted, everyone involved published their information on a public forum, so the concern may have been overly cautious. 

I found that it was useful to also include the date when Solidoodle reported the first printer was shipped: 7/10/2012.  This gives a more realistic idea of the number of printers shipped per week.  It isn't difficult to then extrapolate somewhat accurate delivery dates. 

In addition, I've derived some other interesting data.  The number of printers delivered seems to be about 50 per week.  This number has slowly increased over time, but is inconsistent with the "10 per day" idea on a six day work week.  Another current relation from the order number to the serial number seems to be ((order number - 75)/2) = ~serial number.  Using this data it is possible to provide an equation that will predict when people will receive their printers based on order number. 

(((((Order number-75)/2)/50)7 + [7/10/12]))

This is pseudo-code, but should give the basis for prediction.  I can break this down more if needed.

263

Re: Orders Shipping List

I thought the order Number isn't as important as the invoice number. The system increments the order numbers even when the order wasn't made.

264 (edited by krist10an 2012-10-18 09:22:14)

Re: Orders Shipping List

I've added all the shipments I've found in this thread to a spreadsheet to be able to estimate delivery, and see if they are actually improving or not. I'll try to share the spreadsheet once i have cleaned it up a little bit.

Edit: I see that the numbers are already in the wiki. Nevermind the spreadsheet then :-)

Please keep adding order numbers, order date and shipment date whenever a printer is shipped to you, so we can better guestimate delivery for everyone :-)

265

Re: Orders Shipping List

Hi Jon,

Jon wrote:

Using this data it is possible to provide an equation that will predict when people will receive their printers based on order number. 

(((((Order number-75)/2)/50)7 + [7/10/12]))

Nice, but it seems a bit complicated... I suggest order date + 20 weeks, so far it's been holding quite well...

F

266

Re: Orders Shipping List

and wrong ..
I should have had mine 5 weeks ago according to that smile

267

Re: Orders Shipping List

Brad wrote:

I have created a table on the wiki for a printers shipping list, much appreciated to add your information there!

http://www.soliwiki.com/Printers_Shipping

you want the date the status changed, (Monday) or the date it arrives? (Both bits of information may be useful? especially to non-US customers such as myself).



Gordym wrote:

it is possible that they just shipped the filament. When I click on View, the status line at the bottom of my order shows the tracking number for my shipped order. I received mine quite a while ago. Unless they changed their process, you should be able to see it as well. If you look up hte tracking number on the shipping company's website, you should be able to see the weight of the package. It should be a significant weight to accomodate the Solidoodle along with the filament. If it is a couple pounds, it is probably just the filament.

I don't have a status update, that still says pending processed. -even though on the previous screen it says shipped.
http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t166/daniel_rainbow/solidoodleorder2.png

Jon wrote:

Ian,
In addition, I've derived some other interesting data.  The number of printers delivered seems to be about 50 per week.  This number has slowly increased over time, but is inconsistent with the "10 per day" idea on a six day work week.

I assume it's quite far off of the 22 per week that support suggested that they were doing at the end of last week also!?

The trouble is we know that output has not been consistent, they have had multiple supply issues, so there have been days where they've not been able to "do" anything that would result in a complete machine.

We also know that in the past they've taken machines from the production line and put them to use in the factory making parts, these variations makes it probably impossible to get any real indication of the amount made per day now.

I would assume as staff numbers are increasing, they are having to take maybe four or five printers as parts makers for each member of staff. - it's be impossibly slow to print parts sequentially on just one printer for each assembly line technician. - so I imagine it's a double edged sword. adding an extra worker to the production line might mean that 2 more printers per days can be produced.
BUT, that also means that two more sets of parts must be produced each day also. I haven't seen the solidoodle up close so can't estimate how long it's take to print the bits for it., but consider that if a part has a 6 hour print time that really means only one part can be produced per shift,
that means to complete 2 per day, (what that worker will need) there must be two printers for that single part.
if there are two of those parts then that's actually four printers needed. -that could be just for the rail guides or something... then there are lots of other parts.

So two more per day can be produced, but the immediate penalty is that a large number of printers needs to be removed directly from the production lines and given to these workers at their stations just to keep up with demand.

All these reasons mean that.
support will always tell us, "we're producing X per day".
and we'll always ask "why do we only see Y per day shipped."

your psudo code suggests that I should have had a 185 day wait. (26 week)
and that I'm only half way through that at the moment.

That suggests that the wait from order time could be as much as 6 months. and ties in pretty nicely with what we've seen thus far.
even ties in nicely with what support are saying now.
e.g. may orders have shipped as late as October, June orders should all be shipped by the start of November
July orders should start shipping in November. - but I expect that they will slip to December.

I expect that as time goes on that code will need revising.
I think blog posts suggest that from July - September there were 300 printers made?
from September to October that seems to have jumped to 700?



Looking at the blog postings where production updates have been given...
shipping starts jul 10
10 per day
August 8 shipped over 100, qry 240? at ten per day
now they say that they can make 10 - 15 per day

August 17 they said We've shipped over 150 printers. (5 weeks = 30 days, surely this shoudl be 600 at ten per day?!)

August 24 250 printers shipped.
september 7 = 350 printers shipped

september 14 = 400 printers shipped (finally shitting just less than ten per day!)
september 21 = 500 shipped
October 5 = (around) 700


Solidoodle have constantly said that they are producing more than they have been producing.
but the good news is that it is getting better.

plotting this data in excel, and allowing for some smoothing. working a size day week, assuming constant output each day...

I believe that in week one they could only have been making around 2 per day.
and they amount per day has steadily increased.
week 1, (2 per day), week 2 (3 per day) and so on.


the bad news is that given the last two updates 21/09 500 have shipped,
then there's been a redesign
5/10 700 have shipped.
it looks like there has been a slowing in production with the new re-design. -it also looks like solidoodle have never consistently hit more than 20 units per day.
see attached spreadsheet

Post's attachments

Book1.xlsx 15.46 kb, 16 downloads since 2012-10-18 

You don't have the permssions to download the attachments of this post.

268 (edited by krist10an 2012-10-18 11:02:15)

Re: Orders Shipping List

Here is a graph of the shipping time based on the wiki. Looking forward to see if shipment times improves as Solidoodle ramps their production and more people are getting their printers shipped.

Post's attachments

shipping.png 13.31 kb, 2 downloads since 2012-10-18 

You don't have the permssions to download the attachments of this post.

269

Re: Orders Shipping List

I would prefer that shipped printers only be included in the wiki.  We want to see trends in total weeks waited, and "weeks waited so far" kind of clutters up that column, especially since you can do sorts on all of the columns.  It has been hard enough to figure out shipping from this thread since so many people list pending to the point that Brad tried to start "Shipping Only" threads.  I see the table as a replacement for those. 

I know that invoice #s are better trackers, but it has been much more rare for people to include them, while everyone lists their order #s.  I think the relationship between Order and Invoice #s becomes less important if we can get a list of actual serials.  Most of the discussion about those two numbers is an attempt to get at the # of printers produced, which is what serial tells us directly.

The date listed as shipped is the best metric to go on, since transit time is variable, and it is starting to sound like the time between shipped status and actually leaving the factory is a little variable as well.   I guess we could include delivery time, but that would require knowing the users' country, and don't have many of those. 

If you are already listed in the wiki, please add your serial.  If you just changed to "Shipped" please enter your info and come back to fill in the serial once your printer arrives.

270

Re: Orders Shipping List

IanJohnson wrote:

I would prefer that shipped printers only be included in the wiki.  We want to see trends in total weeks waited, and "weeks waited so far" kind of clutters up that column.

I agree. I included mine because on the same page it's written "Leave your shipped date blank if your printer has not yet shipped, and fill it in when it has.".

On the other hand, it could be kind of interesting if someone has been waiting for longer time than the average shipment time, as it seems that the queue is not being cleared on a FIFO basis (apart from the report above, a guy on Facebook reports that his june 11 order already arrived).

But if you were to remove the "pending" statuses I wouldn't object (they also need updating, in principle).

271

Re: Orders Shipping List

danny wrote:
Spencedaddy wrote:

you can´t be talking about a SOLIDOODLE  order?!

you mean that your PRINTER is marked as shipped that you ordered in July? can we get some invoice numbers and order numbers for our eager eyes?

I shit you not and indeed I am.
1x pro machine $598
1x filament $43
1x shipping international $96.15 (total 737.15 as shown below). - shipping doesn't count as an item, which is why it says two items for that much.

http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t166/daniel_rainbow/solidoodleorder.png


If I receive my order out of sync, with the rest, then I'm going to be in a difficult position.

solidoodle as a company will have fulfilled their "contract" with me and I'll have nothing to complain about, but at the same time they'll have shipped things out of order and let down one guy who should have the printer that will hopefully arrive to me...
so, I can't complain, but would see something to complain about. (my head may explode!)




Four things though.

Firstly, this is seemingly likely to be a mistake, support have been in here saying that June hasn't started shipping yet that it will hopefully start next week, and will take three weeks from when it starts.
(so it should have been around November 5th by the time July orders started shipping.)

It should have been the end of November by the time July orders finished shipping.

Secondly.
If it's not a mistake,
then there could be a number of reasons why machines may ship out of order, support have said something before about assigning serial numbers to orders before they are produced. so maybe it's that this machine has been ordered, assigned to a person and that person has jumped ship. maybe I'm the next on the list that was not yet assigned a serial number, and have hit some kind of awesome jackpot.

Thirdly,
It's extraordinarily unlikely that a factory full of people thousands of miles away from me have decided to change their industrial processes because I've had a little rant. -so I doubt that ranting at support will help.

Fourthly.
a bit of text on a web page is not a printer in my hands.
it should take a couple of weeks before I actually get the printer. -it has to leave the factory, traverse the Atlantic, get poked by customs, get handed to the royal mail, they have to send me a letter saying go pay the import fees. and when I've done that... - well that is when I'll be happy that I've actually got the printer!

Yours shipped on the 16th. I personally did not expedite your order. Sometimes, the shipping guys will ship an order out of order if it helps them get more printers out in a day.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

272

Re: Orders Shipping List

krist10an wrote:

Here is a graph of the shipping time based on the wiki. Looking forward to see if shipment times improves as Solidoodle ramps their production and more people are getting their printers shipped.

It is interesting that the graph shows a constant average, I would have imagined it would be a bit more erratic even in the averages. The wait time should decrease, albeit slowly, over the next four months.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

273

Re: Orders Shipping List

If someone has waited longer, they can certainly complain here, and then we will get the data point when it ships.

I think it isn't FIFO so much as they start production in order, or maybe a batch hits the starting line all at once.  Some printers go to faster techs and hit the finish line sooner.  It is likely that they don't all get through QC at the same time.  If serials get assigned to orders, then if your printer fails QC and needs correction it won't ship before the orders behind it. 

Also it is possible that not all assembly steps happen every day.  If they don't have enough staff to put several people on every single step, they might have everyone work on one subset of assembly one day, then move to another set of steps on the next.   It might not be 20 printers completed per day, but every 3 days 60 printers hit QC.  The orders that are without case might get a head start. 

John has mentioned that the weekends are "parts prep."  Does that mean you divide shipped printers by 6 days or 5?  Production is only 5 days, but it the rate is higher because the prep work has been moved to Saturday.

274

Re: Orders Shipping List

IanJohnson wrote:

If someone has waited longer, they can certainly complain here, and then we will get the data point when it ships.

I think it isn't FIFO so much as they start production in order, or maybe a batch hits the starting line all at once.  Some printers go to faster techs and hit the finish line sooner.  It is likely that they don't all get through QC at the same time.  If serials get assigned to orders, then if your printer fails QC and needs correction it won't ship before the orders behind it. 

Also it is possible that not all assembly steps happen every day.  If they don't have enough staff to put several people on every single step, they might have everyone work on one subset of assembly one day, then move to another set of steps on the next.   It might not be 20 printers completed per day, but every 3 days 60 printers hit QC.  The orders that are without case might get a head start. 

John has mentioned that the weekends are "parts prep."  Does that mean you divide shipped printers by 6 days or 5?  Production is only 5 days, but it the rate is higher because the prep work has been moved to Saturday.

There is a limited amount I can reveal here, but let me try and clear a few things up.

Printers are made continuously, rather than in batches. They proceed through a fairly straight forward assembly line, and spend time in QC. Parts prep days help us deal with parts that are "bottle necks" to further production. However, all parts are made every day.

The example of the printer that does not pass QC is plausible, but other factors also come in to play. It is faster to ship Pro models than experts, and for this reason should it be 10 minutes to shipping time, some of our shipping techs may bump a nearby pro model in line.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

275

Re: Orders Shipping List

solidoodlesupport wrote:
krist10an wrote:

Here is a graph of the shipping time based on the wiki. Looking forward to see if shipment times improves as Solidoodle ramps their production and more people are getting their printers shipped.

It is interesting that the graph shows a constant average, I would have imagined it would be a bit more erratic even in the averages. The wait time should decrease, albeit slowly, over the next four months.

Ah, that was maybe a bit confusing. It is indeed the constant average of all shipments.

See the attached picture, I have removed the (confusing) constant average and sorted by order date instead of order number. (The order number is not really that interesting).

The bulk of the deliveries seem to be around 19-20 weeks so far, with some quicker than that.

Post's attachments

delivery_time.png
delivery_time.png 12.52 kb, 2 downloads since 2012-10-18 

You don't have the permssions to download the attachments of this post.