Archived Copies of Warranty Week

December 2002 to Today

Seventeenth Annual Product Warranty Report: For a variety of reasons, claims and accruals continue to grow in the vehicle sector and shrink in the electronics sector. But sales have grown faster, so the overall share of manufacturing revenue going towards warranty expenses remains below 1.5%. Warranty reserves, meanwhile, came close to setting a new high water mark late in 2019, after years of declines.
April 16, 2020
Warranty Claims & Reserves, Part 1: Using three metrics: claims, reserves, and sales, we can calculate which industries and even which individual companies are over or under the averages for both their spending on claims and the capacity of their reserve funds. And by charting the results, we can see which companies, industries or manufacturing sectors have the most consistent warranty expenses.
February 6, 2020
Hornbeam Insurance Targets Small-Scale Deals: After all the recent industry consolidation, just a handful of very large insurance companies dominate the service contract industry. And their retail and manufacturing clients also tend to be large companies, leaving an opening for an insurance underwriter aiming for small-scale deals.
November 21, 2019
Automotive Supplier Recovery: While the OEMs are enjoying lower warranty expense rates, it's not all good news for their suppliers. While some of the cost reduction comes from OEMs manufacturing better products, some could be the result of increased reimbursements by suppliers. A few of the relevant warranty metrics hit new records in 2017, suggesting increasingly successful supplier recovery efforts.
April 19, 2018
Semiconductor Warranty Report: Though the companies making capital equipment that's used to fabricate and test semiconductors and printed circuit boards continue to pay more warranty expense than their manufacturing customers, the gap has narrowed considerably over time. Some companies have cut their expense rates in half.
June 1, 2017
Semiconductor & PC Board Warranty Report: For most of the companies making microchips and printed circuit boards, sales are up and warranty expenses are down. But expenses have fallen far more dramatically for the suppliers of the chip manufacturing equipment, who used to spend a far higher share of their revenue on claims than their customers did.
May 12, 2016
Manufacturing Excursions: When bad things happen to good companies, their warranty expenses soar. External observers can see the numbers, but can't always determine the cause. But sometimes, the numbers merely confirm what's already in the news.
August 1, 2013
Warranty Software Report: IDC Manufacturing Insights has documented the spectrum of claims processing tools available to warranty providers and extended warranty administrators. And like it did in March with its warranty analytics vendor assessment, the crew once again looked at each company's current capabilities, target customers, industries served, and future strategies.
July 26, 2012
Warranty Maturity Model: Now that three companies have put themselves through the self-assessment and compared notes, it's time to widen the offer to additional manufacturing companies. Next month, the three companies will present case studies at the WCM Conference in Orlando.
February 9, 2012
Warranty Software Acquisition: Engineering wants to talk to warranty and so does manufacturing. And warranty needs user manuals and parts from them. No single company's software can make them all talk to each other, not even a CAD/CAM company like PTC. So it bought warranty software company 4CS to round out its product line.
September 15, 2011
Warranty Experts: It's one thing to hear software salesmen talk about the benefits of their products. It's something else when that company's own customers stand up and say how happy they are, despite the challenges they had to overcome. And when warranty professionals gather next month in Orlando, multiple warranty experts from major manufacturing companies will do just that.
February 20, 2009
General Motors' Warranties: The world's largest automaker is running out of cash, and if a government loan doesn't come through soon, bankruptcy may follow. As the largest U.S.-based warranty provider, GM's fortunes may have a Lehman-like ripple effect throughout the entire manufacturing sector. Then again, maybe a court-supervised opportunity to reorganize is just what the company needs?
November 13, 2008
Warranty Management: Warranty management for manufacturing and sales organizations is becoming an intense focus area. Warranty spending by US-based companies surpasses the Gross Domestic Product of some nations. But warranty is an avoidable cost, if managed efficiently and judiciously. As warranty also involves customers directly, the larger imperative of organizational image is at risk. A prelude to warranty management is information stability, consistency and transparency.

The Chief Information Officer plays a pivotal role to iron out the initial impediments before laying out a smooth track for warranty management in any enterprise. This article brings out the different sources of warranty data, a collaboration model for warranty data, the business dynamics of multiple stakeholders with respect to warranty management and displays ways to assess and improve warranty information maturity.
November 14, 2007
Extended Warranty Solution: ServiceBench aims new service contract solution at manufacturers, retailers, dealers and distributors of appliances, HVAC, fitness equipment, and other underserved markets. Goodman Manufacturing and Icon Health & Fitness are the first to sign up. Rainmaker Systems to help with telemarketing.
July 25, 2007
Warranty Management: The Next Frontier in Cost Reduction and Product Quality Improvement? A new approach for exploiting warranty data offers manufacturing organizations a means of quickly finding and fixing product failures.
October 3, 2006
Warranty Forum: Manufacturing Insights plans to invite the CIOs of all manufacturing companies to meet quarterly to talk about warranty and other topics.
August 9, 2005
Reducing Warranty Claims: Sometimes a company focuses its engineering talent on a manufacturing problem that once solved, results in soaring product quality improvements and plummeting warranty costs. Other times, a company gets lucky as product families mature and installed bases age themselves out of warranty.
February 3, 2004