Silent Burner Cap - quality control issue

Seems like things don't change much Ross.
I ordered 300 burner caps from Optimus, (aka Katadyn), in 2009.
Below is a sample of what arrived...!

A portent of quality control issues to come from Katadyn perhaps..?

 

The old adage would seem to apply:

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

Best Regards,
Kerophile.

 

Just curious,

Where were these caps actually made? Somewhere around here I have an older Optimus cap made in Sweden, that has the holes all messed up as well.
I also have a Phoebus cap that has a row of double-punched holes.
I guess this means that defective parts sometimes slipped through even when production was not outsourced, but a vast quantity of bad parts being shipped is just inexcusable, yet seeminly increasingly common.

Regards,
Doug E.

 

Hi Doug, By all accounts the Swedish stove manufacturers were not all enlightened employers, nor philanthopists. The workers were on piece-rates and had to work very hard for minimal wages. Radius itself was born out of a Primus strike, where the workers were locked out.
Best Regards,
Kerophile.

 

You are absolutely right. While we complain about the decline in quality of products from the "good old days" There certainly were evidences of poor quality goods and poor labor practices everywhere.

Even in recent years here in the US, I had one memorable summer job working on an assembly line where making our daily quota of finished parts was of paramount importance0. We were told in no uncertain terms that quality was someone else's responsibility.

I was quickly fired from that job because I spent too much time making sure the operation that I was responsible for on a given assembly was perfect.

Oh well, that job was lost, and soon thereafter they outsourced production to their factory in Mexico!