Patek Philippe

We all had an experience with ridiculously long service times, especially with our beloved brand PP. After having to wait 9 months for the service of my 5140, I was happy to get a turnaround time of only 4.5 months for my 5550. Then I thought, wait a minute, 4.5 months is still a lot. So I decided to start this thread to re-discuss the topic which has been discussed several times before. Perhaps with new forum members fresh new ideas can emerge. 

Long service times may be the way things are in the mechanical watch industry today, but it is frustrating for sure.

First, we all know the general sequence of events in service.

1.       1. Watch is received for service, its movement is recorded and a service technician examines the watch.  This sometimes can take 1-2 weeks unfortunately.

2.       2. The watch is generally disassembled with each part carefully examined and placed in a separate bin and a list of problems are identified. The owner informed of costs, again takes 1-2 weeks.

3.       3. Service is then performed by replacing parts, lubrication and calibration. This takes anywhere from 2-10 months unfortunately.

This service model, especially steps 2 and 3, was necessary in the early days of mechanical watches as each piece was individually made and fitted by individually made parts. However, this model is obsolete now. Through improved production processes each part of a watch is now made with greater precision and reproducibility thus they are completely interchangeable between the same calibers. The parts may still be individually hand finished, nevertheless all parts at the end are interchangeable. That is, there is really no need to give to the customer the ownership of every gear, spring etc. Just like replacing all the screws, the crown, the stem and hands during service why not replace everything else as well. Except of course the piece with the serial number on it. Frankly, I don’t feel an emotional  attachment to a specific gear or a spring in my watch. The watch as a whole is what I care about.

So my humble suggestion to PP is to stock a sufficient number of mechanisms, e.g. 240 and 324, that are already calibrated and ready for use by the service department. When a watch is received for service, especially under warranty, they can just swap the mechanism except the piece with the serial number on it and send it to the user in a matter of few weeks -instead of 2-10 months. The mechanism that need the service will be then send out for repair and calibration and back into the pool of stock mechanisms ready for the next service job. This method of service undoubtedly will decrease service time.

Of course there will always be exceptional cases. Thus my comments are meant for watches in regular production or were in regular production.

Yes, this is an industry wide problem which is also related to the unavailability of quality technicians. That is why I made the above suggestions to partly remedy the problem. 

Hope we will have a productive discussion.

Cheers.

Jim