IWC thought of the week

A while ago, Andrew started with a post with this title (or something quite similar) and I have a question that intrigues me for some time.

Every year, IWC produces a fair amount of watches and most of them will be worn regularly, thus requiring service in an interval anywhere between 5 and say 10 years. This means that each year, a significantly higher number of watches will have to be serviced.

Does this mean that the service department is getting bigger and bigger each year to handle the increasing workload?

Kind regards,

Clemens

I thought about this some years ago

Then I wrote about it on the German forum. As I couldn't expect the service department to grow and grow, taking the capacity of manufacturing new watches, I only could come up with an answer that I really liked: IWC had to improve upon quality control to make sure that every watch would come out as good as possible, and IWC had to improve upon toughness of every aspect of the watch, so that periodical maintenance wouldn't be necessary that often. The idea is thus that new watches would become better and better, which is good for us. Furthermore, good quality control is much cheaper than repair, you only have to see quality control as a cost cutter on the long term, and not as a cost maker on the short term. Now, I really hope this is true, and not only a concept. As far as the reports that we get from all kinds of visits to the factory, and the articles that appear, it really could be true. Isn't that magnificent?

Kind regards,
Paul, wearing Saint Exupéry Chrono

I appreciate your comments and I

think that the idea of putting all the quality in up front is an ideal situation so that as you sell more you are enjoying some efficiencies.
However, other watch companies are still trying to continue the same way so that watches get backed up in Service for periods of time

I don't think most watch owners follow the ...

five year rule. In fact , in my experience, many go by the notion that if it is not broken there is no need to fix it. Usually you wait until something goes wrong and use that as an excuse to perform normal service.
But I also agree with the theory that the better quality control dictates less service calls, at least in the first few years. Also, I think that, while we may be unaware of the typical repair problems which occur within a model, the service expert knows what is likely to deteriorate or fail and is likely prepared with the proper spare parts. I know that several watch repairs I have obtained resulted in substitution of new hands or other parts at no charge for problems I did not know I had or might have.

Interesting thought

and one that has got me trying to recall a discussion I had with the duty watchmaker on Saturday morning in Schaffhausen. He mentioned that the routine service of watches has recently doubled and that "IWC" are dealing with 10x more watches than this time 10 years ago. He actually quoted exact numbers per month but unfortunately they went straight through my brain.

• Andrew