This is really incredible. To summarize for people who don't have access:
1) GT was a solar furnace maker that first offered to sell Apple 2300 furnaces so that Apple could produce sapphire screens for the iPhone 6.
2) Then Apple decided to lend GT $500 million and have GT own the furnaces and produce the sapphire (although it had no experience in producing high quality, production volume sapphire) for Apple.
3) GT became a captive supplier to Apple and had exclusivity
arrangements - so it couldn't diversify its business.
4) GT hit production problems with almost 50 percent of the boules of sapphire being cracked and unusable.
5) GT had operational issues, where people were paid to just sweep the floor over and over.
6) GT eventually filed for Chapter 11 - surprising Apple.
Actually they said "more than half" were unacceptable, but still your summary is basically an accurate one of the article.
I don't know if it is the same but in the semi-conductor business the reactor/furnace used to make the silicon boule had an oversized influence on the yield of the wafers produced. That lead to some folks timing their wafer starts to coincide with a specific lot of wafers.
1) GT was a solar furnace maker that first offered to sell Apple 2300 furnaces so that Apple could produce sapphire screens for the iPhone 6.
2) Then Apple decided to lend GT $500 million and have GT own the furnaces and produce the sapphire (although it had no experience in producing high quality, production volume sapphire) for Apple.
3) GT became a captive supplier to Apple and had exclusivity arrangements - so it couldn't diversify its business.
4) GT hit production problems with almost 50 percent of the boules of sapphire being cracked and unusable.
5) GT had operational issues, where people were paid to just sweep the floor over and over.
6) GT eventually filed for Chapter 11 - surprising Apple.
7) The iphone 6 didn't have sapphire screens.