On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:49:45 +0100, "Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote:
>> I had already read that Atmel (on their site) was nearly
>> ready for sampling on the AT91FR40162-66CI, so although I expected some
>> delay I didn't expect the 10 months I experienced.
>...
>> Needless to say, I've not specified any Atmel parts and I'm not planning
>> to.
>>
>> Atmel has made us feel exactly like how we impacted their bottom line. If
>> you can see _your_ impact in their annual report, you get treated accordingly.
>> And if you can't see your impact there, likewise is also true.
>>
>> This can be important to some. It is, to me. This isn't something I bring
>> up because I feel a mission here. I like the AVR a lot and I really enjoyed
>> using the STK500 board, which was provided to me at an excellent price and has
>> served me well. The documentation is good, too. Also, my experiences with
>> programming on the family is excellent and the products are carried at Digikey
>> in some quantity. So there is a lot going for this family of Atmel's. I don't
>> pause for a second to consider them in my hobby projects and, in fact, I keep
>> tubes of them around here for that purpose.
>>
>> But as far as relationships go, I do not feel that I can count on Atmel to
>> be there when the chips are down, so to speak. Not at volumes my company
>> has, anyway. I guess it's going to take some effort (on both our parts, I
>> suppose) to improve the lost trust.
>
>I think these are quite valid points, but I think they affect both large and
>small customers.
They may. But an experience I mentioned that may not be clear and which you do
not deal with is that the FAE on several occasions called me to ask more about
what my volume was likely to be. As I'd already disclosed details such as the
product concerned, existing product lines and volumes, and a host of other
information, the only question he pounded on was about volume. Somehow, this
was the salient point at the time about whether or not they would be
forth-coming with the parts, it seemed from the discussions.
Not that he said as much, of course. But if you were present for the calls, I'm
pretty sure you'd understand exactly why I take this sense from them.
>SAP certainly does not make any differences.
SAP being?
>Atmel has still some work to do in its internal business systems.
That may be so. Perhaps if this "work" were fully disclosed and transparent so
that I could judge how this affects me for now, it would help some. But in any
case, I cannot judge anything from being ignorant about what is going on.
>The sampling system has been really problematic.
Putting it bluntly, yes.
>Before 2004, the sampling system was more or less manual
Which would now suggest to me that I was properly exposed to the real mindsets
of the real people involved. In other words, I got a clearer picture of how
Atmel employees see the world, since it wasn't hidden behind some automated
system.
>During most of 2004, the sample department was simply overloaded
>due to unexpected consequences of the SAP implementation
Care to share more of this with us?
>It also did not send enough information to keep the stocklevels
>so parts would not be ordered in advance.
Perhaps. But I was in biweekly contact (sometimes, as long as a month, later
one when things were certainly dragging out) with my distributor over those 10
months, who themselves sent emails to Atmel (they told me they were doing this
and I've no reason to imagine otherwise.)
I later found out that there were large customers receiving these parts 6 months
before I saw even one. I cannot forget this detail in my case, coupled with the
constant return to "numbers" by the FAE, on those occasions we talked. Look, my
FAE was feeling pretty guilty by the end of September. That was clear from the
apologies I received. Yet he also instantly returned to the only question he
had, which was "numbers." It seemed that this is what he was being asked to
double-check, to me. So when I discovered the fact that others were receiving
said parts, it put the pieces together as I have recounted them here. For me,
at least.
>There is no feedback to the distributor when samples are to be shipped
>so they cannot tell you anything until the samples arrive.
I've no reason to doubt this point.
>People have been working on a new sampling system for about a year
>now so hopefully things will improve during 2005
Thanks for the response.
>I think in your case, it was probably just that the part was announced too
>early.
Perhaps, but as I hope I've made clear I don't think that was the entire picture
at the time. Parts were being shipped to others -- larger 'others' at the time.
>One way of handling this is to make a conscious decision
>to avoid considering parts which are not in production.
Agreed. However, this was a case of a project that was to start designing with
prototyping in September, hopefully to resolve the key technical hurdles in
using the AT91 by sometime in December/January, with design of the final product
starting then. In other words, I already planned for the usual "slip" I
experience. Also, assuming you accept my assurances (you can check for
yourself, since I've given you the exact part number here) that these parts WERE
shipped as samples to others months before I received my two in December, there
is an issue here that isn't quite as simple as you seem to suggest.
I'm still not convinced that there wasn't an evaluation going on, an intelligent
one with "malice aforethought," to decide whether or not I was worth taking two
parts from a much bigger customer wanting more than a few. There was some kind
of balancing and weighing going on behind the scenes and I didn't rate high
enough, I think.
Understood, of course. Perhaps our products didn't deserve a high score on the
Atmel "profit motive" scale. But I have had experiences with companies who do
manage to make us at least __imagine__ we rate some attention, even if the truth
is still different.
Jon