Time for an all new update. This week we have a shipping update, as well as an extensive production update. Without further ado, here is update #102:

Shipping tomorrow!

As mentioned in our previous update, we’re able to ship plenty of orders to backers all around the globe waiting for their Ockel Sirius A Pro’s.
The airfreight is expected to arrive today at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, which means that we’ll receive the Ockels in our European warehouse tomorrow. We will start with the fulfillment of all orders tomorrow afternoon! As with every other Ockel order, we will be using DHL Express to ship the orders with. DHL guarantees a shipping window of less than four business days, world-wide. Stay tuned for the track & trace details you’ll receive in your e-mail boxes!

Last week we worked hard to finalize additional Ockel Sirius A Pro’s and this process will continue this week. A small additional batch with Ockels is expected to be ready for fulfillment next week. Good news for some of the backers who won’t receive their Ockel Sirius A Pro this week.

However, we won’t be able to fulfill all orders with the current amount of ready & ‘almost ready’ Ockel devices. For those who won’t receive their Ockel in the coming week or next week the following production update applies.

Production update

In our previous update we mentioned that we needed additional time to discuss production details with our technical partners. In the past week we have had many conference calls with our technical partners, as well as with our component suppliers.

A couple weeks back we mentioned that we were in the middle of the QC (Quality Control) process. During the QC-test we encountered a high defect ratio of the PCB’s (70-80%). We used last week to find the root of the problems causing the high defect ratio. We found out that the 8-layered PCB had suffered from oxidation in the production facility. The PCB supplier worked around the clock trying to ‘repair’ the PCB’s, but after a couple of days between hope and fear we were updated with the news that the PCBs were not repairable. This for sure is a major set-back for us as a team, as we were real close to the finalization of the production of this batch with Ockels.

After many discussions with our technical partners we decided to switch from PCB supplier in order to guarantee quality and a fast delivery window. We have found two new suppliers for the 8-layered PCB of the Ockel Sirius A. Both suppliers are doing all they can to produce the PCBs as quickly as possible for us without handing in on the overall product quality. We chose for two suppliers this time to minimize the chances of unacceptable build/component quality as well as unexpected delays.

Here at Ockel we always aim to turn ‘bad news’ into ‘good news’ eventually. That’s why we decided to implement a few improvements to the PCB for this unexpected ‘new’ PCB production run. Normally this would cause a major delay to any production, however this time it won’t affect the leadtime negatively as we have to wait for the new PCB production anyway.  The improvements of the PCB are mostly unnoticeable for the average Ockel Sirius A user, but will result in a more stable device overall.

The expected leadtime of the new PCB production is set to 30 days from today. As soon as we have our hands on the first PCB’s we will extensively test the components. After the component tests we will start-off with a trial production and test the fully assembled Ockel Sirius A’s extensively again. As far as our expectations go for the moment, we are facing a delay of about 4-6 weeks from now.

We are fully aware of the fact that some people have been waiting for several months right now and we are truly sorry the production delay. The entire Ockel team is doing all they can to fulfill all existing orders as quickly as possible without handing in on the quality of our product. Since the day we started this campaign we knew it wouldn’t be an easy job to design, create and produce the most versatile Pocket PC ever.
We are very proud of the successes yet to date.  Including the fact that thousands of Ockel Sirius A users all around the globe are satisfied and using the Ockel Sirius A in their day-to-day routines. On top of that the Ockel Sirius A was granted with several awards, including the Red Dot and GIO award last year. You as a backer are an ambassador of Ockel, without you we wouldn’t even exists. You are part of the success, we believe you are even part of the Ockel team and we can’t thank you enough for your trust and patience.

Heading overseas

Our CEO Tim and Product Engineer Jan Paul are on their way to our technical partners and production facility overseas. They’ll make sure that everything is going according to plan and will have several meetings with all parties involved with the production of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro. They will keep a close eye on the production of the PCB’s while they are there. Their findings will be shared during our weekly update, here on Indiegogo.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team