Cutting costs to stay competitive while meeting growing demand, Toyota, Sony and others compromised on quality control as they tried to reach ever-larger sales targets, analysts say.

The result: recalls of more than 7 million vehicles in the U.S., Europe and China for problems with their accelerators and floor mats, and the suspension last week of U.S. sales and production of eight models including the Camry, America's top-selling car.

Apple experiencing multiple manufacturing issues with 27in iMac.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Apple was delaying further shipments of the 27-inch iMacs until it could get to the bottom of the screen issue. Many believed the fix two days ago was the solution, but it’s not. And so Apple appears to have a very big problem on its hands, literally. If I have to send this bad boy back, it will be the second time I’ve done so. The first time, it shipped to me with a crack in the screen. A problem which is also not an isolated one.

HP has an exploding laptop battery problem - didn't they learn anything from Sony?

After two reports of flaming laptop batteries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday that Hewlett-Packard is voluntarily recalling 70,000 lithium-ion batteries that shipped with several models of its HP and Compaq laptops.

The recall affects nine models of HP Pavilions, nine models of Compaq Presarios, two models of HPs, and one HP Compaq laptop model sold between August 2007 and March 2008. For the full list, see the CPSC's site.

There were two separate reports of batteries that "overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage" but no injuries, according to the CPSC report.

Learn more about this failure of quality by visiting CNET news.

Yahoo! Games News has an article detailing the restitution program Microsoft has implemented for its failing consoles:

If you've suffered from this latest crash, we've got some good news for you. In a move that mirrors Microsoft's response to the 360's past hardware problems, the manufacturer announced today it's granting all systems experiencing the error an extended three year warranty. In other words, if your console has the E74 error, you can send it back for a free replacement -- and if you've already had it repaired and paid out-of-pocket, Microsoft will be refunding your money in the next few weeks.

EDN has an interesting look at Process Variation - and the fact that you can't simply test as "pass/fail" - there's a multitude of ranges in between.

But manufacturing is actually a statistical process and isn’t pass/fail at all. One area that is getting worse with each process generation is process variability especially in power and timing. If we look at a particular number such as the delay through a nand-gate then the difference between worse-case and typical is getting larger. The standard-deviation about the mean is increasing. This means that when we move from one process node to the next, the typical time improves by a certain amount but the worst-case time improves by much less. If we design to worst-case timing we don’t see much of the payback from the investment in the new process.

The full article and be read by clicking here.