Funny you should mention it.
Several years ago, a Taiwanese PC motherboard company experienced widespread failures of their boards out in the field.
It turns out that they had electrolytic capactors with 'youthful' mortality problems. Just enough to pass factory final test, and get into the hands of users and work for a while before going kaputt.
The capacitors were bought from a component manufacturer who offered a really low price. Too low. A young engineer, a capacitor whiz, had just come to that company from a competitor. He had brought with him the special formula for the electrolytic mixture--sort of like "Jack's Secret Sauce."
Problem was, he didn't have the full formula. He didn't know about an additional component of the chemical mixture that was necessary to keep the caps from self-destructing.
IIRC, it cost one or two companies their existence.
From what I read back then, it was a cause of very widespread board failure in many consumer electronic products (mobos, vcrs, vidcams, TVs), with many manufacturers not being open about the cause and unwilling to honor warranties because of the massive cost impact.
Holy cow, a Taiwanese PC motherboard company experienced widespread failures of their boards out in the field.
That explains what happened to huge LCD signs we had problems with in baggage distribution system at ORD UA. Spent 60 man Hrs to fix/NOT. The manufacture finally sent tech to help solve problem. Add 20 Hrs, Problem was so intermittent that we figured out it was board level. We are talking 200 total controller boards. We called in an engineer from the PC board manufacture Taiwanese who sent engineer.Another another 30 Hrs, Immediately, SEEING PROBLEM said boards had bad CAPS. To all you United passengers that lost your luggage in Jan/Feb 2005 via ORD. Just blame it on a .02 cent capacitor.