Bean counters and outsourcing are wonderful things aren't they? ☹
-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of DrFranken
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2019 9:26 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Card withdrawal
Withdrawn hardware with near certainty is because the vendors have told IBM that they are no longer producing that part. This happens often with little warning. There was another feature just announced as dropped just recently. It's a normal course of business.
Clearly part of the issue is spare parts so they do the math on what's needed based on installed quantity and failure rates etc. They also can get spares from IGF and you sometimes see those labeled "Servicable spare part". There is certainly no guarantee that a replacement part is a new part.
As to parts locations I don't think they stock much if anything local to anywhere an longer. All the little white parts vans have been recalled in Michigan at least and 100.0% of all parts I've dealt with for AT LEAST the past year have had to come in via UPS to the airport. And they have sucked at it. In one case nearly 36 hours to get the correct part to the customer on a Sev 1 system down during the week. We also have no technitians local to Grand Rapids any longer, the closest is an hour away and has 3 years with IBM. He pulled the top of an operating POWER7 E4D......
And just an FYI if you might think this is a public comment that will do no good (as it likely won't) I also wrote this up and mailed it to IBM's CEO. I was contacted by her office but they don't get it. They think I'm complaining about poor service on one issue. I was unable to get them to believe that IBM's service level has fallen off the table. Once able to leap large PMH's in a single bound they can now trip over a 2.5" hard drive.
Fortunately here in Grand Rapids we are the home of Service Express and their primary parts inventory. And guess who is hiring the IBM field engineers that IBM fired for 'excess age'?? :-)
- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis
www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.
On 10/22/2019 9:57 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:
Hopefully, when the product is withdrawn from marketing that it doesn't also mean that IBM stock of replacement parts dwindles down to 3 day shipping from some remote warehouse.
Most parts aren't individually listed in maintenance costs. I'm betting that some of the drives listed there are.
Rob Berendt
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