Hi,

I was invited to come over the press conference yesterday. Looking at some of the comments on facebook and forums, there are still a few misunderstandings as it seem. I did a post on my blog Fratello Watches just now to share the information we received yesterday and to give some opinions about it as well.

I copy the text here as a whole, so you don't have to click away to my blog (but you are still welcome to visit Fratellowatches.com at any time)

Here it goes:

Yesterday I joined the press conference in the Cite du Temps in Geneva about the new watch certification based on new quality standards for the Swiss watch making industry. This news was communicated by Omega and METAS (Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology), more specifically by Nick Hayek of the Swatch Group, Stephen Urquhart, Andreas Hobmeier and Raynald Aeschlimann of Omega and Christian Bock of METAS.

After I received the invitation I quickly googled what METAS was about and it appeared to me that something was coming regarding certification. However, I could not foresee what it exactly would mean as they do measurements and tests in all kind of areas. So I was happily surprised yesterday that METAS will be performing certification on more stringent tests than we've seen before in the Swiss watch industry.

Before going into details, the certification will result in 400.000 - 500.000 Omega watches featuring the 'Officially Certified' wording on the dial. This process will start in 2015 and will be gradually done of course to include all Master Co-Axial models in the Omega collections. It will also mean that the watches they will send to COSC will be gradually reduced over a couple of years. It doesn't mean that COSC (Chronometer) isn't good or has no meaning anymore, but Omega (and Swatch Group) decided it was time to seriously reconsider how their watches could be tested and certified in a way that all actual requirements of a timepiece would be met accordingly.

Currently at COSC - and we explained this in detail before a couple of times - only movements are being tested in various temperatures and positions and need to meet the requirement of -4/+6 seconds deviation per day on average. We all know that a watch that runs slow is quite annoying, so -4 seconds per day is not something you want to experience with your mechanical watch on a daily basis. Also, since we are wearing our watches on our wrists and not just carry around movements, it seems to make more sense that a complete watch is being tested.

Other brands like Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre a.o. have their own rigid ways of testing and monitoring the performance of their watches and giving them a quality seal (PP seal and the 1000 Hour Control seal from JLC). However, being a former auditor from one of the Big Four accountancy firms and at an investment bank I know that testing (and certainly certifying) your own work isn't exactly the way it should be done.

So what does it exactly mean?

Master Co-Axial Officially Certified
Simply put, when an Omega watch is said to be anti-magnetic and can withstand 15,000 gauss, have a water resistance of 300 meters, have a 60 hour power reserve and having a very accurate movement, you want to be sure it meets these specifications or requirements. Even if you don't use them. When you buy a car with 300HP, you want to be sure it has 300HP, perhaps not because you use them all the time but certainly not in the last place because you paid for them.

Where COSC was only used to proof the accuracy of a watch, the new "Officially Certified" label on the dial will proof a couple of things more:

• the function of each movement when exposed to magnetic fields greater than 15,000 gauss;
• the function of each watch (!!) when exposed to magnetic fields greater than 15,000 gauss;
• average daily precision (different positions and temperatures) between 0 and +5 seconds a day (before and after being exposed to magnetic fields > 15,000 gauss);
• the power reserve (in hours) of a watch;
• water resistance (in water).

One of the questions raised was whether 15,000 gauss is a realistic number. We know that Omega was the first to come with a anti-magnetic movement (instead of making it anti-magnetic by the construction of the case, Omega started using anti-magnetic parts for their movements) and thus this takes very seriously. Why? Well, over the last decades our environment has changed. Office spaces filled with computers, modern cars packed with computers and electronics, iPads/iPhones etc., electronic kitchen appliances and so on. Even a magnetic clip of a women's hand-bag is said to produce 1000 gauss already. In short, watches are being exposed to a lot of magnetic fields all day every day. You will easily reach thousands of gauss during normal daily activities. 15,000 gauss is still a high amount, but you have to set a high standard, as the magnetic fields surely won't become less in the years to come.

I already touched the subject of the 0 - +5 seconds a day deviation instead of the current COSC-standard of -4/+6 seconds. This will mean that Omega will not be producing watches with the Master Co-Axial movement that will run slow.

So what will happen if a watch - after being bought - will not meet one of these requirements after all? That it will run slow for example? Stephan Urquhart told my colleague Alexander Linz of Watch-Insider in an interview (click here for the interview with Stephen Urquhart) after the presentation that a customer can then offer his watch to Omega and they will have it fixed.

Another neat feature that Omega talked about yesterday, is the fact that the customer can login to the Omega website with the codes on his warranty card and then can retrieve the actual test results of his own watch. He will be able to see the deviations measured during the testing of the movement.

About METAS
The METAS organization exists since 1862 and has become a public company since January 2013. METAS is occupied with measurements for all kinds of branches, including the Swiss watch industry. They are an independent and competent party that for example also audits the testing procedures and processes of COSC.

Independent but still working with one brand, Omega? Yes. Every brand can start a partnership with METAS. Other brands can also have their watches tested and certified meeting their own requirements. If another brand will claim to have a watch that is accurate between 0-2 seconds per day, have a 20.000 meter water resistance and so on, METAS can monitor and certify these watches as well. In other words, the criteria that Omega sets for their Master Co-Axial Officially Certified watches does not mean these are the criteria for all watch brands that want to be certified by METAS as well. However, the processes and procedures will be made public anyway and can help other brands to gain insight in how Omega performs their test work on their Master Co-Axial watches in order to get them certified.

Omega will have a new building (called O1) in the near future where the entire third floor will be devoted for testing their Master Co-Axial watches. METAS will have a continuous presence in this department as well, in order to monitor and check all test work performed in order to get the watches 'Officially Certified'.

What will happen to COSC?
As you know, the brand that offers most movements for the Chronometer certification is Rolex. Omega is number two and Breitling comes third. After that, Swatch Group brands like Mido and Tissot also deliver their (large) share of movements for chronometer certification. Although Omega will reduce their number of movements offered to COSC for certification in the next coming years and have them 'Officially Certified' by METAS, there is still enough ground for COSC to keep on doing what they are doing. However, in my opinion COSC has clearly been challenged to re-consider the criteria of their testing when a client decides to do things differently and aiming for higher standards.

Omega versus Rolex
Before, during and after the announcement in Geneva yesterday, many of the conversations I've heard immediately included Rolex. Is this a big 'diss' to Rolex by Omega? In my opinion is it merely a challenge for Rolex to come out of their shell (no pun intended) and show their ambition level and aim for innovation as well. However, I also sincerely believe that Omega did this for a far more important reason to have their watches 'Officially Certified', convincing consumers that Omega is capable of developing and selling good watches that will do what Omega promises them to do and keep on going for a lifetime.

Innovation? Yes please!
We all know the Swiss watch industry can be a bit slow and it takes ages some times to come up with (real) innovations. This can be perceived as annoying (some times), but also that it is a sustainable business. However, a question that is being raised among my watch friends and fellow Fratello Watches team is often this: how long can keep certain brands come up with providing only marketing stories about their brand, heritage and their watches without really hitting the market with innovative stuff? Some of the arrogance that is exposed towards consumers is clearly rubbing a lot of watch enthusiasts the wrong way and that bubble will definitely burst in the end. If you make good watches, like Omega (and Rolex), you don't have to make up stories or pay famous people and ambassadors to wear your watch (although in some regions this seems to get people over the line and buy these watches), you don't have to lie about production processes or what you did yourself or what parts (or know-ledge) you have bought.

"It is not diamonds or gold on a watch that determines the future of watchmaking. It is technical innovation that does." Nick Hayek (CEO Swatch Group)

In any case, I applaud Omega for taking the road to become 'Officially Certified' and provide their customers with an independent 'guarantee' that their watches will properly work according to their specifications.

 

Thought provoking post RJ, it'll be interesting to see how the other brands respond to this. Thanks!

 

Indeed that would be interesting but I bet they won't come with official statements.

By the way, someone asked in a comment on the post on the website whether this would increases prices. Urquhart told us yesterday that price won't be raised by this.

 

Current Omega tolerances for COSC certified watches are -1 to +6 for average daily rate, so although they get the movements COSC certified now, they already have tighter internal tolerances, which are easily met by the way. I suspect the new timing standard will require next to no effort on the part of Omega to meet also - it will be interesting to see when/if the specs change on the Extranet.

So, they already test the watches for power reserve, accuracy, and water resistance at the factory. So although this new testing (done by Omega still) will apparently somehow be under the supervision of METAS, it doesn't add any performance tests that they are not already doing. Yes there is the test for magnetic resistance...but that is not really a performance test.

I am not sure what they do now for testing the Master Co-axial watches for magnetic resistance, but testing every watch for this is somewhat pointless IMO. Unlike power reserve, timing, and water resistance, it is very unlikely that if the watch has been designed to withstand a specific level of magnetic resistance, it will suddenly not meet that standard, since the (relatively small) changes are in the actual materials used in the watch. Do they think the material that is non-magnetic will suddenly become magnetic, and the watch will fail the test? That does not make sense to me.

If they have good inspection of incoming materials (to ensure material suppliers are shipping them the correct alloys for example), and they are in control of their parts supply in production so magnetic and non-magnetic parts don't get mixed up, I don't see much reasoning for this test to be honest. The magnetic resistance is designed into the movement - it is not something you can "tweak" in the movement to improve it if it fails the test. It is also not something that you can incorrectly assemble and the watch will loose it's magnetism, so it really doesn't equate well to things like water resistance, timing, and power reserve, as all those can be affected by how the parts are put together. So putting my engineer hat on for a minute, from a process engineering and quality assurance point of view, If you have proper process controls, then this step is not needed.

Seems more like a marketing move than anything else - note that this does not make it invalid in my view, just different than a proper value add.

Cheers, Al

 

Correct Al, it is not about the testing, it is about the certification. You can approach this as a marketing move, which it certainly is, but at least it markets the fact that their watches do what the specs say they do / can do and not marketing a (made-up) story to persuade people buying their watches for the wrong reasons. So, it is not about the testing itself (which they indeed already did), it is about having their test processes and procedures certified. Although I wouldn't care myself for all kinds of certifications, a lot of people obviously do (hence the 1.2 million watches certified by COSC) and the demand for similar 'certified' watches by other standards (Testaf comes to mind).

With respect to COSC, that's also a bit of marketing of course, as the watches are regulated before by the manufacturer. COSC only measures.

 

I have a fair bit of experience with certifying production methods, so ISO 9000, TS 16949, etc. so I think I have a different perspective when it comes to quality control.

When you say it's not about testing, but certification, I'm not 100% sure what that means. This new certification scheme does not really jive with my experience of what certification of a process really is. This sort of testing is simply the very end steps in any manufacturing quality control system - it's just final testing of a product before it leaves the shop to make sure it meets specs.

In contrast, true quality certification is about having systems in place to monitor, manage, and improve production processes that lead to better products and greater efficiency. It focuses on defect prevention, not just finding them at the end of the production line as this appears to do. In many ways if you have to do a lot of really intense inspection at the end of your production, this indicates you don't trust your production methods and quality systems to produce the quality you want, so you have to inspect more to find defects. Inspection (testing) is not a "value added" activity.

We had a saying at my former employer (we made precision bearings) that "You can't inspect quality into a product." It's very true - no amount of inspection or testing is going to make a bad product a good one, and testing and certification alone do not improve defect rates. I spent a good part of my life improving production processes to reduce defect rates, and of course this sort of work is not nearly as sexy as announcing a fancy new certification process, but it has more real impact on product quality.

I would also disagree with your suggestion that demand is driven in any really significant way by certification. Looking at the whole market (not just the collector communities) I doubt most people who buy COSC certified watches have the slightest clue what that really means. They just bought a nice watch because it looks good, is expensive or popular, to mark a life event (a crown for every achievement mentality). So to correlate sales with certification is shaky in my mind. I'm not sure even many collectors buy because of COSC certification, but buy because of the history, brand, looks, etc.

Anyway, interesting discussion.

Cheers, Al

 

That could be. I always have been on the auditing side of things, but I do understand the certification and reasons for certification.

It means that the announcement yesterday was emphasizing on the certification, not the internal test procedures or the quality control during assembly / manufacturing process.

Well, Rolex, Omega and Breitling (that take up to 85% of the entire COSC certification right now) are not delivering their movements to COSC for the fun of it. They use it as proof that their watches are accurate and this is of course also part of their marketing. And no marketing activities are done with being a demand for it, whether this demand is being 'created' by a brand (as I agree with you that no-one asks for a 'chronometer' in a shop) or not.

A brand needs to tell and show why their watches are the best, things like a chronometer certification helps them explaining this.

I think so too. Although you seem to disagree, I think it is a step forward. Now Omega can proof that there watches are actually 'good' by using the independent and highly respected METAS to back this up. They will use it in their marketing/advertising campaigns to explain to potential buyers what their watches are about. Also, brands that just write their specifications without truly being capable of meeting these standards should be challenged imho. Whether it is about accuracy, power reserve or water resistance (or anti-magnetism). It is better to know upfront than to find out after you've bought a watch.

RJ

 

I personally think it's a gimmick, and an unfair one. Since they are proposing setting this as a new standard for all brands it is a little sketchy that the test is designed to the highest specification Omega has. Period. It's like setting a test for the most handsome man born on april 22 1971 in Madrid from a mother called Pamela and a father named Eduardo at exactly 8:45 pm...I think I would win, and very few if any others would be able to certify...so what's the point? IF Omega as a brand is marketing a certain movement and watch characteristics like 15000 g should we not trust already they meet such specifications? why create a faux certificate issued by Omega itself unless it is just to make it stand ahead of the competition, who may or may not be looking to make watches of that specification.

 

Not quite IMO. COSC came as a result of massive issues with performance. It was a safeguard for a whole industry and brands had to differentiate when their watches stood, or not to that standard. I do think that it may be obsolete and could add some more stringent and new parameters to it's testing.

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Archer said: ↑
I would also disagree with your suggestion that demand is driven in any really significant way by certification. Looking at the whole market (not just the collector communities) I doubt most people who buy COSC certified watches have the slightest clue what that really means. They just bought a nice watch because it looks good, is expensive or popular, to mark a life event (a crown for every achievement mentality). So to correlate sales with certification is shaky in my mind. I'm not sure even many collectors buy because of COSC certification, but buy because of the history, brand, looks, etc.
[/QUOTE}

But it does add value and it does count. There is a market difference between 4 line Rolex and 2 one Rolex. Collectors may not care because the value has other dimensions and sentimental weight, but if you're selling two identical watches and one of them is certified and you tell that to the buyer 9 out of 10 times they will go for the certified watch.

 

Couple of quick things...hopefully. I guess I should have said this off the top, but I have not made a judgment about this being a step forward or not, because the announcement made was a marketing exercise, and didn't really contain any useful (to me) technical information. This is why in my first post I said I will be interested to see what changes in the specifications I see on the Omega Extranet when this goes into effect.

As a watchmaker, average daily rate is not the most meaningful measurement to be honest - there are other tolerances that are much more relevant. If you get all the other things right, then average daily rate is easily made within tolerances. So I would be very interested in any changes they made to the Delta requirement at full wind, or if isochronism requirements change for example, or if they started doing checks over 6 positions instead of just 5. Until I see those sort of things change, then I see no real improvement here (other than maybe a change in what Omega calls the "target" average rate), just mostly verification of what they have been doing all along.

You appear to be saying that this new testing regime is needed to verify that the watch performs as it should. I can see this to some extent certainly, because there are new watches out of tolerance posted about frequently on forums (not so much here, but certainly on WUS this is a fairly common topic). But it also implies that people maybe should not trust a company to produce a watch to it's own specifications, which is a bit odd.

I did have a chuckle with this statement "This will mean that Omega will not be producing watches with the Master Co-Axial movement that will run slow." Uh...okay. Remember, doing a test or stating a tolerance does not improve the watch, so at the very best you might say they won't ship a watch that runs slow, but they will most certainly produce them!

The devil is always in the details, so this could be a giant leap forward in horology, or it could just be 100% marketing. Time will tell, but I suspect it will be more of the latter than the former.

Cheers, Al

 

No, as I wrote in my initial post, as Omega told us during their presentation: "Every brand can start a partnership with METAS. Other brands can also have their watches tested and certified meeting their own requirements. If another brand will claim to have a watch that is accurate between 0-2 seconds per day, have a 20.000 meter water resistance and so on, METAS can monitor and certify these watches as well. In other words, the criteria that Omega sets for their Master Co-Axial Officially Certified watches does not mean these are the criteria for all watch brands that want to be certified by METAS as well."

 

No fuss when it comes to certifying their own watches. But they could just call it a warranty...oh wait, that would be too easy.

The issue is wether they impose a new certification system that is then applied to other brands, even thought the testing seems very targeted towards their own brand.

IMO Certification should always be done by third parties, at third party labs, with no bias towards result.

 

I am not disputing that if you had 2 identical watches that you were selling, the only difference being one that is certified and one not, that you would have an easier time selling the certified one. I'm not looking at things from this small micro level. A better example to get my point across is that if Rolex said tomorrow that they were no longer going to send their watches to COSC, but told everyone that they will do the testing in house (which I would think they do to some degree already - they aren't stupid enough to send a watch out for an expensive test without knowing it has a very good chance of passing) and will guarantee the same timekeeping they have always had with COSC in place, that everyone would stop buying Rolex watches.

To me COSC is more about tradition, marketing, and the "Swiss way" than it is about ensuring timekeeping. You most certainly do not need a COSC watch for it to keep excellent time, and well within the often quoted -4 to +6 second average daily rate range.

People buy watches for a lot of reasons, but COSC certification is pretty well down the list for most people. People are not going to buy some ugly watch with a crap case just because it's COSC certified.

Cheers, Al

 

Ah, Got it. Thank you. I missed that, but still see METAS making bank out of this one, with no real improvement to the costumer. Warranty and brand is what should determine how trustworthy a watch is. It's a natural selection. The top brands are those that have stood the test of time, be it on movement or design. If Omega started to make watches that failed to meet their own specifications it wold be a matter of one to two years before everyone was on it. It's like the iPhone that bends, or the car that fails... METAS is not going to help much, i don't think, but it will have an effect on retail value, because someone has to absorb the cost and it is not going to be the brands.

 

I see your point.

 

Come to think about it, does that mean that if I created a watch with +~20 min a say variance, no shock, no waterproof, one dial hand and submitted it as such it would be certified? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?