It is impossible to service Olympus m43 cameras (OMD EM1)

Danielvr wrote:

[..], later such manuals could only be accessed via company owned laptops and password credentials over secure encrypted VPN. And I think that is likely how Oly/OM does make them available to their service centers.

Sounds plausible. I still don't think they have actual service manuals for their internal use, because it would be more economical to just maintain a database with the required info for each product.

That is exactly what service manuals are. For example the GM5 manual in front of me, is just 62 A4 pages, and that includes three lenses that some models came bundled with.

What it contains is sketches how to disassemble the camera, where to begin in which order, where the screws and any hidden screws are. It explains the service mode software that is in the camera, how to access it and what can be done with it. It explains the error codes and likely causes and fixes. Common maintenance tasks. Which different models exist. And the circuit diagrams and circuit board layouts. And the exploded part lists and order numbers. Here and there some tips and tricks that are particular to that model. How to test some items. Special tools needed for some tasks.

That's it. Likely much much less than what you expected. It's only a camera after all. In comparison, the factory service manual for my 20 year old car is 50 times as many A4 pages thick. The one for my tractor too.

The service manuals for an old Panasonic video recorder or my Panasonic airconditioner are each much thicker than these camera manuals.

There simply is not that much stuff inside a camera. The problem is that cameras are smaller, and need some different skill sets, and you have to follow a specific individual order to take them apart without wasting a lot of time or risk damaging parts.

The guys at service centers do not repair and adjust assemblies like for example a shutter or an EVF or an IBIS module. There is no need for them to know how this would be done. They simply replace whole assemblies for new. Thy also have a pre-set time limit, if say a repair seems likely to take more than x hours work or x $ parts, they can even exchange the whole camera or lens instead and just transfer to old serial number to it.

But that's just speculation, so we're basically in agreement.

As for Panasonic, in addition to the consumer appliances and professional tools that they're known for, they're also a major producer of all sorts of parts and components for the wider industry (capacitors, batteries, lens elements, chips, etc). So, they're used to catering to engineers and manufacturers which agrees with the mentality that you describe and that's very different from dealing mostly with resellers and consumers like Oly/OMDS does.

Yes, it is very much a matter of company culture. Old Olympus for example was a mainly medical devices company. Their medical service centers handled cameras just as a small side job, likely with partly shared workforce. You can easily imagine that the culture of a medical company is by nature completely different - they have much higher compliance standards to follow and meet as they are regularly audited, and these then apply to all tasks carried out under the same roof. OM service are now under their own roof, and do not need to bother about medical certification auditing of the site anymore. They likely are not even required to have a QA certification anymore at all, if they do not wish to. All they do is consumer goods, if they do not want to they do not even need to care about industry standards anymore, as they do not supply to other industries like Panasonic. I guess, that is also how an IPX1 rating suddenly can become an IP53 rating.