Will Lenovo finally 'get it' that we want higher quality displays?

The difference is only around 2.5% in area between a 15.6" 16:9 and a 15.4" 16:10, while a 16" 16:9 is around 2.6% bigger than a 15.4" 16:10.
By the way, a 15" 16:0 costs no money at all! I don't get your point.

 

The truth that it's not a matter of if Lenovo will "get it" that many people want at least the option of a better screen. They do understand - and they dont care.

I know this because I made a perfectly polite and relevant comment on their "Inside the Box" blog regarding screen quality - and the censored my comment out.

So that tells you how much they care about customer opnions on this matter. They are more concerned with pursuing the lemming-like chase to the bottom of the barrel, along with the rest of the PC industry.

Strangely enough, none of them seem to have asked themselves any hard questions about how Apple alone manages to make more profit on laptops than all of them combined. It's not just about marketing. It's also smart choices and quality.

Lenovo for example makes far too many redundant models, thus spreading itself too thin and in the procesess loses economies of scale in marketing, purchasing, manufacturing and repair/maintenance. Whether 16:9 or 16:10, surely it would be a lot easier to provide quality screens when you have fewer better targeted models instead of taking a clueless scatter shot approach, throwing a million models out there hoping maybe something will stick. Apple makes 4 laptops in three very intelligently picked screen sizes and sells these in huge volumes. All of them have a better screen than any comparable Lenovo model. I dont think its a coincidence. Anyone wo wants an Asus or generic laptop would buy that anyway. If you have a "quality" brand, you need to support it with a quality laptop end-to-end, not a half-baked thing that ends up with a netbook-quality screen.

For a company with a "design" heritage, Lenovo really displays very little ability to think "design" on a broader level. It's very sad.

 

Considering the vitriol and inane comments that Lenovo doesn't moderate out from their blogs, I find it difficult to believe that they removed a polite and relevant comment whether they intended to respond to it or not. Care to repeat it here?

I suspect their haphazard approval process for new commentors is the likely suspect. Even some of mine take weeks to get approved on the blogs that I haven't commented on before.

 

I hoped this would happen in the past three years.... but, sigh....

 

@Skagen.

Lenovo is not Apple. It simply doesn't have the marketing expertise to do what Apple does.

Also, the entire success of Apple is due to Steve Jobs' flair for design and marketing, without him the company is nothing that special. You only have to look at how poor Apple. Inc did when Steve was not at the helm of the company.

Also, Thinkpads are not consumer model laptops like Macbooks are, so one model fits all doesn't quite work. If the company that buys Thinkpads needs SmartCard reader you got to make it available, or they can just go to Dell or HP whom are more than willing to fulfill these requests.

Dell is the master of Direct Sale Model, while Apple is the master of vertical integration and outsourcing of their production.

Lenovo is the master of neither... and certainly loses out to HP on volume of laptop sale and market capitalisation, while it can't compete either with Acer regarding costs.......

 

don't be so quick to assume lenovo is a saint here
i've also seen perfectly polite and valid comments/questions about the screen quality issue deleted without trace on the lenovo forums and blogs

not to mention q&a posts where lenovo staff are actively answering and responding to posted questions, they'll answer inane questions about "LOL HOW DO I BUY A NEW BATTERYY?" and not even acknowledge the questions about screen quality

 

How exactly would I repeat a post that they deleted? It's not as if I copied it, expecting to be rejected.

Frankly I was shocked. At least until I realized that they actually didnt need my information. They know and dont care. That's bad enough but the censorship of a perfectly polite comment is simply intolerable.

 

Censorship in general has gone too far these days, it's like that one radio spot in GTA 4 that goes along the lines of "since i'm too lazy to moderate what my kids watch, i'll just censor anything that could be offensive or start controversy" but that's another discussion altogether.

I think Lenovo's business laptops do have a justification for having bland/average/mediocre screens, after all, they're bloody business laptops... I'm probably one of the few people who would game on a ThinkPad and look at gaming capability when choosing a ThinkPad. However they did introduce the W series, which is catered to designers and photographers that "demand" color accuracy and well represented contrast from their screens. I don't think having a "good" screen on a T series ThinkPad should be standard, it should be a option.

 

Actually I would dispute this. The point isnt that Lenovo should be Apple. It is that that Lenovo should be something to somebody, instead of nothing to everybody. Focus and execute. Market effectively, produce efficiently, manage customer service properly, dont have too many redundant products when you could serve the market with far less. This is nothing Apple invented. It's business basics actually.

In particular the products are just not designed holistically. You cant put out an $1800 laptop like the T400s/410s with one single type of screen that is in fact worse than $500 acer netbooks. And then when customers order the thing, they cant get a reliable delivery date and customer serivice reps are clueless. There is no position there. Its not serving corporate nor consumer not govt really.

In particular the model reduction is a major need. You go look at what business and governents are doing in their own organisations and its streamlining too - they are all reducing the number of SKU's they buy manage and support internally. What they do but, but they want these things to to be smartly designed and more flexible to serving several needs with one product, not multiple products for multiple needs. So no, they dont need a gazillion models This is what killed the likes of GM, compared to a BMW or Mercedes.

So I think what we see with the lack of high quality screens is really a symptom of Lenovo's sickness. It's not the core problem. The core problem is that they dont know how to do business on many levels, spanning product design, operations, customer service and so on. Basically they are standing still, cynically milking the keyboard and "design" brand equity they bought from IBM, with no real intention of going any further.. But how long is that going to last? The only sure result from sitting in the middle of the road is that you will become roadkill.

There is no such thng anymore. That's like 10 years ago thinking. Today such thinking kills you in the electronics business. People's lives are merged. And even working in business, multimedia is an increasing part of business

Dor example, the iphone is not a consumer toy - its actually one of the hottest selling enterprise smartphones. Meanwhile, it's not many months ago that Nokia had to eat some huge shutdown costs closing its standalone "Enterprise phone" unit (which had sole responsibility for its E series phones). And now Nokia is adding what used to be "consumer" features to those phones.

So basically in world where even company CEOs have blogs and communication is increasingly video oriented , the idea that there is such a thing as a "pure business" laptop is shaky at best - and serving business well actually means having a good screen.

 

True, they have been milking the brand since when they bought it. However they can sell these laptops for the same price you stated, if the most common things people like in laptops currently, is high quality, but everything else can be generic and mediocre. Assuming the consumer will overlook the bad quality products, until after the point of sale, but of course, they will discover the bad qualities and not want to buy another product from Lenovo.

 

In regards to viewing angles and overall screen quality, is the 410S screen good enough for 3 people to comfortably watch a full screen movie from about 6 feet away? Thanks

 

i would say no to this question
baseline tolerable? sure
comfortable or enjoyable? no
video in general is going to look like garbage on the t410s even if you are sitting right in front and center of the screen because of the poorer-than-average black levels and contrast ratio

 

Because of the mediocre screen, I decide to get the T510 with HD+ or a macbook pro.

 

"after all, they're bloody business laptops... "

No they are marketed as such but there is not a single thing about them that makes them "businesslike". They are simply solid perfomers.

Renee

 

If you are coming from the best LCDs, then it might not be the best experience for you. Sitting even further should help though.

 

Thanks, I'm just looking for a relatively decent viewing experience, so it should suffice

 

Come on, from 93 they weren't business laptops? Go look at an old ad of the 701C in 95, it was all about business and the corporate user, nothing regarding the average consumer.

 

I got a T410s and I can say screen is much better than expected. I heard so many bad things about it I was thinking of cancelling my order, I'm happy I didn't. It's not the best screen or something that will impress you but comment's like "it's intorelable" "it's unbelievably bad" "worst screen on the market" are mostly coming from people who haven't even seen the screen.

I've got a T60 with an IPS panel and a 24" IPS desktop screen, yeah those destroy this one in terms of quality but that doesn't mean it's intorelable. I'd say it's just ok, maybe a bit below average.

 

A good thing to keep in mind is that with Internet culture you're getting opinions from those of us that are mostly picky and also very opinionated. Thanks to the 90 / 9 / 1 rule

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%29

I can verify that rule holds true for this forum. So it's possible 99% of people might actually be fine with the screen, you just don't hear them here.

 

For me what is most important in a notebook purchase, is build quality and long term reliability. Performance comes second, and screen quality comes third. I think those looking to buy a thinkpad are probably thinking about 1, as Lenovo/IBM is known for making great quality machines that last, and that's probably why many choose Lenovo in the first place.

 

While I cannot verify what is and is not removed from public view in Lenovo's blogs, only comments/questions that violate the forum rules are removed from public view in Lenovo's forum. Mark does not ask us to remove messages criticizing or questioning Lenovo's products or policies.

 

You disagree that Lenovo's inability to keep up with demand for any and all improved displays for the T510 & W510 tells us they misread market demand for improved displays?

We have no data for the spread of display choices actually purchased when all the options are available. If supply of improved display units represents 10% of production with an 11% demand, the shortfall becomes very visible to us. I suspect that Lenovo is losing some sales either to competitors or delayed purchase decisions. If they see a revenue increase when the FHD displays become available some time next month (or so the rumor goes), Lenovo should understand the link between revenue and screen quality...

 

There are probably more people getting upset at the delivery delays than at the screens.

 

One could argue that lenovo should improve its (apparent) CTO supply chain issues rather than prioritize screen quality selection.

 

That would be my experience. For most people cost is the overriding factor when buying. You see much more griping here, but this is the enthusiast forum where every detail is analysed.

I think people who say Lenovo should do this or that as if Lenovo could snap their fingers and make it happen, fail to grasp the monumental task it is to design, manufacture, ship and support this large amount of notebooks/pcs. Could it be better? Of course, but it's an organization run by people and like all people they aren't perfect. At the end of the day it's just a notebook. My own notebook order I think was lost during the zaniness of the outlet coupon. If I got it great. If not I probably didn't need it anyway and there's always some else out there.

 

Well the truth is that Lenovo doesnt need to worry about perfection. There is no danger of them achieving that anytime soon. J<o> ></o>

But coming back to the point, I don’t think its matter of prioritising screen quality vs logistics and customer service. There are all one and the same problem: you have a company in an identity crisis. It doesn’t know who it is or whom it services or how best to make profits - and thus you see a lack of priority on any and all dimensions.

Because even if it was clear that Lenovo wanted to be a low end, low-product company, I can tell you that even McDonalds for example is organized and regimented like crazy. A McDonalds operation is probably run with MORE structure than many 5 star restaurant kitchens out there. They are cheap burgers, but they are provided in a rigid and highly managed process with extreme predictability and tracking. If the fires are taking too long to make compared to their benchmark time, believe me, any good Mcdonalds is on it pronto, same day. Because they understand that their revenue and cost targets depend on it. And mind you McDonalds worldwide probably serves more orders of fries in one single hour than number of laptops that Lenovo worldwide sells in a year. But McDonalds manages to control and manage its process far better. Hmmmm.......that's food for thought if you pardon the pun.....

Nor would mcDonalds launch a new product, advertise it and say that it comes with special sauce – then tell customers who turn up at the drive through that they have a shortage of special sauce but you can cam back in a month to get a burger with special sauce. Whomever was the product manager and purchasing manager at McDonalds Corporation would get fired for that. However, at Lenovo these sort of things are everyday business. That’s the expressway to business history.<o> ></o> >

So if Lenovo wants to ignore quality screens and quality product, one would still have to say that they are not displaying what it takes win, even as a purveyor of mediocre quality, low cost product. This is what I mean by “identity crisis”. <o> ></o> >

This couldnt be farther from the truth. Do you realise how much money Apple makes on their old 13" macbook and current 13" macbook pro? Are these "enthusiasts" - or ordinary joes who want a better computer and back it up with their cash? I think we all know that 99.9% of those folks arent on any laptop forum.

So we are left with a question of why Lenovo is more interested in battling emachines and Asus at the blunt end of the market, where its brand counts for nothing, quality counts for nothing and price point counts for all? This is business suicide if you as me.

 

Good point, but the unique look, color and style of the TP that many aren't crazy of only apeal to a certain audience whereas Macs are liked by most b/c of the looks and style. If they were cheaper, they would even sell more.

No offense to anyone, but if the Apple and Lenovo's build quality and screen were the same, half of non-corporate or individual clients would definitely get the more stylish and slimmer Mac over a brick looking laptop from the 90's.

 

apple makes high margins on hardware because they don't have dozens of manufacturers to compete with like the PC market.   if apple allowed their OS to natively install and run on PC hardware without any licensing issues, the market for name-brand apple hardware would plummet and they would be forced into the same competitive schema that has plagued the PC market for 30+ years.   apple would then have to cut corners just like everyone else and their OS prices would increase to compete with windows.

very few would buy a $2900 MacBook Pro if someone else offered a competitive product for $1900 except enthusiasts.   extrapolate that over a dozen manufacturers and you'd have everyone competing at $900.   that's where we are today in the PC market.   everyone wants a $900 PC, not a $2900 one.

 

All Apple products have high margins, not just their laptop or desktop equivalent. Their iPod, iPhone, Cinema display range, etc, you could easily purchase a NEC or Eizo monitor or HTC touchscreen phone running android/win mobile OS as alternative to their product. This a fad, like how people deliberately sort after Sony Walkman series decade ago, even though their competitors were making the same products and offering them at a more competitive price.

One of the reason Apple products have a high margin, is due to the high level vertical integration with their parts supplier and contract manufacturer. They do have a very good demand forecast system, their new release products are usually all sold out, and there is usually very little leftover stock in their inventory, which lowers their capital outlay.

Also, the limited range of products, also allow them to order larger volume of parts and reduce redundancy in their inventory.

But, more importantly Steve Jobs do a good job of marketing the Apple products, giving them a 'Halo effect'.

iPad is the perfect example, the device is nothing really special and lacks many innovative feature one would generally expect. Yet they still attract so many buyers to that product, where people would line up outside of their flagship stores just to buy them.

Lenovo U1 is more innovative than iPad, but i doubt it would experience the same sort of media and consumer hysteria that iPad had experience in the past few days.

 

"Could it be better? Of course, but it's an organization run by people and like all people they aren't perfect. At the end of the day it's just a notebook."-Zaz

Well let's compare the market to mainframes. Yes, we made mistakes too but we got "the job done". In this light there is a problem with capitalism. People want quality at a low price but you can't have both. It's funny that people have chosen price as a major consideration without thinking about peformance.

Renee

 

Because they don't have dozens of manufacturers to compete with??? Of course they do, have you ever seen any of their Mac vs. PC commercials? They charge high margins because they can. Because they offer something different and have a great marketing team, droves and droves of people buy their products. Believe me, if people stopped buying their products, prices would take a nose dive.

 

It is indeed just a notebook but would you buy a fridge that leaks, a car with bad tyres, a house without a front door? You get my drift... would you buy a state of the art BMW but it has bad brakes? A lot of pro Lenovo people make excuses for a company who clearly does not care. Being a premium laptop seller their screens should at least match those of the competition and I think it is crystal clear that they do not. You know if everyone stopped buying their product for let's say 3 months I bet they may just come up with a solution, especially if the big corporate clients started thinking that way. All the rest I read on here are just excuses ... and I think we all know that. But in the end yes it's just a computer nothing more nothing less... one EMP and it's all a bunch of plastic and metal LOL.

 

Apple sells PC's with the same PC parts inside as any other laptop maker. But they do sell them better, support them better and streamline them better. All of which also drives that margin.

None of this is anything Lenovo too shouldnt be doing - well if they were competent businessmen. Does the matket need you to have a Edge, R, SL and T model all in same 14" size, each own separate bill of parts, manufacturing and support proceess s? Or can you intelligently cut that down to one platform with a few well thought out options, that is more efficient to build, support and market on a per unit basis? That provides you with intrinsic efficiencies which you can then use to maintain product quality. I've worked in consulting and I can tell you this one is a no-brainer in almost any busines.

That kind of thinking is also what real product design is - not perpetually rehashing of a black box that someone thought out 20-30 years ago. It is design that seeks to support both value and quality, instead of gutting quality on a core element (the screen).

That by the way is also partly how Apple manages to have good quality screen in their laptops. They figured out that people will pay more if you cut the waste they dont need (eg redundant models and convoluted internal processes) while keeping the quality they can use (a good screen they can watch video on).

This is why I keep banging on that Lenovo bad screens issue is not actually the main problem - it's in fact a sympton of clueless business people.

 

thinkpad screens work fine, so does a the Dodge Neon, but that Dodge Charger next to you looks way better.

 

Both of you have oversimplified the difficulties of doing PC/laptop business nowadays. You people would not do a better job if you were put in charge of logistics, manufacturing and procurement within Lenovo. Everyone thinks they can do better, until they are faced with the same sort of dilemma and constraint.

The problem with current Lenovo, is that most people whom are put in the top management of Lenovo for procurement, manufacturing and logistics, are under qualified or lacks the real world experience and/or under resourced.

If they want to run the business successfully, they should bring in people who knows what they are doing. To be quite honest most Chinese top level managers don't have the experiences that their Japanese, Taiwanese and American counterparts have in terms of design, development and production (These experiences are all accumulated over the many decades that they were the market leader in the business). If you run your business like a bureaucracy the business will stagnate or shrink.

Steve Jobs is great, not just because of him alone, but he is supported by bunch of designers, engineers and managers that he knows are competent in what they do. He also hire people based on their skills and job performance.

If the public hate Apple, usually we take a spat at Steve Jobs, and held him responsible for whatever reasons that we are not happy with Apple. On the other hand, if we hate Lenovo laptop features or poor service, we usually just complain about Lenovo per se, there is no one really been held accountable (Maybe Mark_Lenovo gets a hard time from the higher management), so no one at Lenovo really would be pressured to see the corporate change that is necessary.

@Skagen, if Lenovo is to practice what Apple does right now, it will shut its door by next year. Lenovo don't have the marketing and vertical integration prowess of Apple. Also, leadership and corporate style is also very different.

Steve Jobs can sell ice to eskimo, i doubt Lenovo or any of its managers can manage that sort of feat.

 

Let me put it the simple way:
Dell got RGB LEDs,- Lenovo and others must follow.
HP will bring forth the improved IPS, - Dell and Lenovo are game.
I don't see any problem here at all. The high-end business line (eg. W510 and W70x) will have the best screens options to stay within the competition. The rest? Probably not.
But I'm optimistic, the number of threads regarding better screens nowadays proves the level of the end-customer-awareness which helps to accelerate the demand for the hardware. At the end it's us (our numbers ) who make them choose the best
Keep at it!

 

Well I agree with the fact that Lenovo should have fewer models, but male these models more customizable, so if someone wants to pay 900 for an X200, they can, or if they want to pay 1900 for one, they can too. Maybe even introduce build quality options, design two different sets of the same model, with the cheaper option having no rollcage and the higher end one having a roll cage, or different lids, 1 just plastic, one carbon fibre.

 

adding more options complicates the production process and drives up the cost. Because the contract manufacturer quotes the production cost on the number of parts to put together.

More customisation = more cost for the laptop company and less profit.

 

Please keep in mind that Lenovo's Thinkpad line primary focus on large enterprise that order in huge quantity. Lenovo has to tailer the Thinkpad line for their needs. They want roll cage, durabilty, relability, support, and keeping the price low. In order to do all the thing above, the screen is one of the thing that could be sacrifice, hence there is no good screen on Thinkpads. Only after market research, did Lenovo offer better screen on the T and W model.

 

I totally agree. People often ask me which notebook they should get. Price is often the first thing that comes up. Not the people on this forum, but just regular users. People on this board tend to be enthusiasts, which skews the perspective. Even here for every thread there is bemoaning the quality of Lenovo's screens, there's 10 asking how to get the best deal.

Your power in you relationship with Lenovo is to buy something else until they offer something you like. Then the question becomes who's offering anything significantly better? No in the same price bracket is in my opinion. Are Dell or HP business notebooks offering markedly better screens? Nope. Even the MBP, while they do offer a high contrast, do not offer the angles, which is really the other part that makes for a good screen.

 

if you read my entire post you'd understand that what i'm referring to above is apple's lack of internal competition from other manufacturers making apple clones.   we all know apple competes with PCs.   that's a given.   but, if apple had to compete with 10+ other apple hardware clone manufacturers along with the PC market then apple's hardware prices would undoubtedly fall.

regarding apple's commercials, the majority push their OS and UI more than their hardware.   apple competes more with microsoft than they do PC hardware.   if windows found a way to beat apple at the OS/UI game then apple would be in for a hurt -- and apple knows this.

+1 to that.

for every 1 person who wants a gas stove there are 100 who simply want a toaster.

 

And sometimes, it's the same person in both threads...

 

This fails to pass the muster of basic logic. Levono offers 3 or 4 screen on every T series model. There is no "sacrifice" to be made in making on of those options a good screen.

You dont understand any of this at all. The first driver of cost is not customization - it is having too many separate platforms. It's far more cost effective to have fewer platforms that are flexible and offer some well-chosen options to customize them.

This is not a casual or speculative point - its one of the major drivers of business today. Lenovo throwing a million models out there is a recipe for disaster.

This actually is the wrong question. Why? Because you are looking to compare to companies that basically dont make any money - in other words they are not providing anything that customers actually value and will reward them for!

So it's beyond me why you think Lenovo should copy a bunch of losers. I dont know about you, but in my business if I am looking at copying anything from of my competition the first thing I ask myself is whether customers actually VALUE that thing.

But to base your standards on what the masses are doing is suicide. If you are no better than the rest, then you sure dont deserve to profit better - and guess what, you wont.

Actually in this day and age companies dont sell products. Product sell themselves - via customers. Steve Job's value is that the "sells" things to people. My sister is a satisfied Apple customer and she doesnt know who Steve Jobs is. But she knows that Apple brand stands for a good, well thought out product that she can count on. This is what I mean - the product sells itself.

As for Lenovo "practicing what apple does right now", well actually if Lenovo doesnt start practicing some of those things, they will shut their doors soon. I would encourage you not to get distracted by the media aspects of Apple and focus on the business logic:
- well thought out products that sell themselves
streamlined and well thought out product lines that actually lower operational costs

This stuff isnt magic or hoodoo - and in fact it is actually MORE relevant when you are competing with a million PC makers then when you have you own operating system. But.....how on earth is a company going to do that, when it is so blind and clueless that it is running around trying to sell "premium" laptops with screens measurably and noticeably worse than what's on my $500 Acer 1810 netbook? This is a situation so absurd that it's funny actually.

So no, I'm not hopeful that Lenovo will ever "get it". Not on the screen quality issue and not really on their entire business actually. You might as well start the death watch now. Honestly......

 

Puhleeze, I think you lack some very basic understanding in the relationship between cost and sales. For Lenovo to use better screens, it will cost them more money to produce. For every dollar that Lenovo has to raise prices to cover for using the "better" screens, it will cost them sales because as I already stated most people don't care very much about screen quality as long as it's not significantly worse than what other manufacturers are offering. With the screens Lenovo is offering at the moment I would say that holds true.

 

@Skagen. FYI none of the Top tier computer companies practice what Apple does, because they have a broader customer base than what Apple has.

Like Erik have said, people buy Apple for both its hardware and its software, and many people use Apple computer/laptops for the software as much as its hardware. If Lenovo were to create an unique software that no other competitor can match, then it is on the same ground as Apple.

I am pretty sure that is called the product concept in marketing, and this is not what is occurring in the current market. This practice you are referring to is often called the marketing myobia.

 

Calm down, Everyone. Please.

 

No............

 

Funny you would say that, as you are actually not understanding any of this at all. Lenovo has 3 or 4 screen choices for any laptop. Adding a quality screen for those who want it, will still leave the cheap cra# screen option for someone who doesnt care. Are you able to grasp that? It's not particularly complicated.

Also for those who are mumbling that "customization costs mo ney" - have you looked at the number of options that lenovo offers right now on each and every model of their bloated product line? And you think it will cost MORE operationally if they present fewer models and take a more targeted approach to customization? One doesnt have to understand operations management to figure this one out, its actually simple mathematics.

One starts to wonder if any conversation on this topic is actually possible, when its being discussed by folks who seem have no grasp on the basics of math and logic, let alone business or operations strategy.

 

I try to do the best I can with my limited intellect/4th grade edumacation and all. Um, most notebooks in Lenovo's lineup have two screen choices or less. Adding a "quality" screen is not a matter of technical ability, it can be done if Lenovo chooses to do so, but one of cost and supply. If it's so easy to add a better screen why haven't HP, Dell or even Apple, who gets much more money per notebook sold than Lenovo, done so? Last time I checked Apple is using TN panels in their notebooks.

Your post did not address any of my points so far. If I'm missing anything here please feel free to enlighten me. You said earlier in your business, are you now an expert in the design, manufacture and sales of PC/Laptops too?

 

@Skagen.

There is no point that you take pot shot at other people's statement.

Just because you are trying to push a marketing concept that were mostly used in the 1950s and 1960s, doesn't make you an expert in logic or math.

Also, we hardly touched anything mathematical in our discussion, we were just discussing some production concepts.

And Regarding logic.... well lets just say not all business decisions are rational... especially a company that has lot of baggage from old days with old way of thinking and running the business.