Shock, Vibration and Noise Blog

Products are made to fit their expected lifetime. The cheap electric tools you buy at home depot with strong american sounding names, but are made in China, are never bought by the pro carpenter etc, who expect a tool to be used 8 hours/day all year.

Those cheap ones are made for the DIY builder who does not need the expense of as good tool.

As for cars, the parts are made for the average driver and use, and they have found it more profitable to do it this way.

Me, I would prefer my vehicles to be made of platinum. They would never rust out, but the cost.

At the root is the cost. DIy self guys buy cheap chinese stuff use it sparingly and are happy. In 20 years, the chinese will make stuff that beats all we make. Then the USA will become a third world country and rich foerign tourists will visit to se your quaint ways, and will throw euros into the water to watch the yanks dive for them

I agree with the post from china. We make almost nothing now in Canada. I come from Ireland (where the culture was you buy it, you keep it). General product quality was better there. Here in Canada, the culture is, you buy it, you use it for 2 weeks or more and maybe you keep it. Or I liked blue last week but its the wrong colour now. so maybe the manefacturers give in to that and drop the standards a bit. I hate taking stuff back so I always check stuff a lot before I buy and I hate the amount of defects that are here. But that is a choice that society has made. The big brand names could specify something other than mild steel in their drill bits (and the canadian regulators should) but they do not. I blame lack of Canadian standards for stuff like poor quality drill bits. If national regulators specified a minimum quality allowed, it could prevent a race to the bottom. Also, lots of no name stuff has outperformed brand stuff in my years. For instance, canadian tire brick hammers. Close to perfect. No name brand comes close to their price and performance. Thats perhaps because I did the quality check in the store before I bought the stuff. Brands are bought and sold nowadays with the intention of keeping the brand and using it on a product from a different factory. The intent is to drop the quality and keep the winnings. Capitalism at its best.

'Brands are bought and sold nowadays with the intention of keeping the brand and using it on a product from a different factory. The intent is to drop the quality and keep the winnings. Capitalism at its best.'

Sadly this would seem to be the way things are.

Wisdom here.

milo

At the root is the cost. DIy self guys buy cheap chinese stuff use it sparingly and are happy. In 20 years, the chinese will make stuff that beats all we make.

After WW II, Japan wanted to send engineering teams to Detroit to see how we mass-produced vehicles. Permission was granted, with the exception that NO CAMERAS were allowed. After the Japanese toured each assembly plant, they would return to their hotel rooms and draw everything they saw in exquisite detail! Eventually Japan surpassed the U. S. in quality and attention to detail. I have no doubt that China may try to exceed the U. S. in quality and also benefit from low labor costs, but the Chinese have a long way to go before the workers, plant owners and the Communist government buy into quality! Look at the "Home" of Communism, the Soviet Union, and see where they have gone in the past 75 years. As was so pointedly said in Animal Farm, "ALL the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others". There will always be buyers for low quality goods and services at low prices. You get what you pay for.

"Do manufacturers actually design products to break after warranty simply to improve their margin and keep us coming back for more abuse? Would your company consider this practice? Fire away!"

Actually, many Manufacturers use statistical analysis of life testing, mean time between failures in order to determine the warranty period. The electronics industry often does a burn in period to weed out the initial failures, then they know that a steady rate of failures will occur, until the increased failure rate starts to occurs.

Most people trade their cars in at the point when the increased rate of failures begins to happen.

Its standard under grad statistics problem.

The question is not so much "do they design them to break then,\?" as much as it is, "do they know how long to warrant the product so they don't have to pay claims when they start to break down as a population???"

milo

I believe the term is "Planned Obsolescence"! If an item lasted forever, you would never have to purchase another one; thus, manufacturers figure in the life of an item for their projected future sells. I was working on the I-84 freeway discussing the need for more traffic lanes with a State of Oregon Traffic Engineer, when he explained the term to me. He stated that the freeway was designed to be rebuilt after 20 years. Confused me then and now that I see all of the freeway work taking place here today, it still confuses me. Go figure.

I agree with the term you used, as it is the same one that I learned so long ago. Personally, I never buy "cheap" tools or appliances because I do expect them to last. I remember when I was an apprentice toolmaker during the late 1970's and early 1980's that I had to purchase a lot of very expensive tools. Cheap (and I do mean cheap!) tools were available then, but I would never consider purchasing them. I completed my apprenticeship in the U.S.A. and insisted first on American-made, followed by German-made, and finally Japanese-made for the best measuring tools. And I never went wrong, and all of those tools are still working well.

I occassionally purchase a new meauring tool, and I am appalled at so many tools of inferior quality that are available for just a few bucks compared to the cost of European-made or Japanese-made tools. I can no longer buy anything good that is truely "made in the U.S.A." as they are just not built here anymore. But that is a rant for another time.

I am the type of guy who will buy a quality used vehicle and keep it running well for many more years. I try to do the same thing with appliances-buy something of high quality that is feasable to maintain and repair, rather than tossing for a new one. Maybe this is a generational thing-maybe I am just a tightwad!

Best Regards,

Ing. Robert Forbus

I purchased most of my tools during my apprenticeship days between 1960 to 1965, and I still have most of them now. Any engineer who went through an apprenticeship will tell you that you have to buy top quality tools to be able to do a top quality job!

My spanners are German made, my screwdrivers are from Sheffield, my adjustable spanners are from Sweden (Bahco), my vernier calipers and clock micrometers are from Sheffield (Moor & Wright), my clock micrometers are from Germany, my elecric tools are made in germany, and all the other tools I have are made in the same countries as the rest. The only other tool that I have had to replace several times is my tape measures.

My household goods are the same, my washing machine (German) Is still in use after 19 years, my my fridge (Sweden) is still going strong after 23 years, and my sound system (Bang & Olafsen made in Denmark) is still in use after 27 years!

Yes I have payed a lot of money in the beginning for all of this equipment, but in the long run it has proved to be much cheaper!

Spencer.

I believe the term is "Planned Obsolescence"! If an item lasted forever, you would never have to purchase another one; thus, manufacturers figure in the life of an item for their projected future sells. I was working on the I-84 freeway discussing the need for more traffic lanes with a State of Oregon Traffic Engineer, when he explained the term to me. He stated that the freeway was designed to be rebuilt after 20 years. Confused me then and now that I see all of the freeway work taking place here today, it still confuses me. Go figure.

I figure when the traffic engineer stated that the freeway was designed to be rebuilt after 20 years, he was not just referring to planned obsolescence, but also, job security. Hope that eases some of your confusion. :-)

It is good quality assurance to get the vast majority of stuff to last past the waranty. You got to have an acceptable failure rate before the waranty period (because early failures cost you a lot) Then after that the various qualitys of components decide the failure curve. If the Quality assurance is good enough, quality hits the economic sweet spot. It is extremely hard to make things last longer if there are even 5 or 6 components that can make a product fail. Because you have to apply a much higher standard to all those components. That can be very costly indeed and often not something that the customer will pay for. I work in masonry. There is a range of qualitys involved. Lots of customers (and some masons) obsess about tight joints in masonry. (Even joints are way more important) It is very important before a job starts to be clear with the customer that what they want and what they get (what they can afford) are often 2 different things! In Quality assurance the key is to give acceptable quality but not have the quality too good. Too high quality costs the manefacturer money.

I buy two kinds of tools, the kind I expect to use over and over and the kind that I expect to only use once or twice.

Why buy Snap On when it is for only one use, go to Harbor Freight.

I believe that the tools and/or other items are made the same way.

If yo buy a 15,000 dollar car do you expect it to run 300,000 miles?

For some years now, we have had a 2 year warranty as standard here in Germany.

Manufacturers can opt for a 1 year only guarantee if they wish, but it tends to be self defeating as it puts off purchasers of course!

I recently had a small Hi Fi system (for our kitchen) from Phillips go wrong after 18 months, the CD player stopped reading MP3 CD, of which we have many. Phillips could not repair it and sent us the latest version with USB support, many thanks Phillips.

Basically the same happened with our Sony DVD recorder after 23 months of usage, again the latest model was sent to replace the one that had gone wrong.

Its sad that in many countries, the legislation does not protect consumers better from poor quality products.....

Some good posts here...
You also have to remember that no one wants to make the everlasting lightbulb or the car that doesn't break down... As soon as stuff lasts too long someone will introduce the cocept of 'fashion' to ensure new sales...
Or they will design yet another new mass storage medium to transfer my old LPs onto. .

It's called consumerism/capitalism/progress/marketing ... whatever.

As a general point...a 'good' design will be optimised such that all parts wear out at about the same time.

Del

"It's the Economy, Stupid!"

Good (economical) design involves starting with a list of performance requirements and then adapting the design to meet the requirements, AND NOTHING MORE! Adding undesired features increases the cost without increasing the desired (specified) benefit. I am amused by the Mercedes commercials that tout all of their extra features, ones that the typical driver will never use. These "features" don't come for free. Are they selling cars or macho gratification? Or am I supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt and presume that superior performance at 150 mph somehow translates into something meaningful to me at 75 mph? Of course, this is engineering nonsense. Specify the performance you want, design to meet the requirements, and then test to see that the design and construction is satisfactory.

For example, who would pay extra to buy an item whose life expectancy far exceeds its useful life, e.g. how much would you pay for a computer that is designed to last 100 years? Obsolescence is another form of failure. And, is it more important that it not break or that it be readily repairable? In some heavy use applications, things are expected to wear and break, and the user is more concerned with the ease of repair. The renowned example is "Abe Lincoln's Axe", where "we've changed the handle twice and the head once."

Yes, there are shady products and aggressive claims by marketing, but there are also careless consumers, who don't know what they want, who buy on a whim, and who whine when they are disappointed. If you really wanted (required) a 2-year DVD player, why did you buy a cheaper one with a 1-year design?

A few years ago GM and Ford were researching the Wankel engine but never went into production. They could perfect a seal that lasted 50,000 miles or one that would last 500,000 miles.

They wanted one somewhere in between!

The car makers are in a carefully orchestrated state of symbiosis with their dealer network to feed each other in turn on parts etc.

Thus the big campaign about "FAKE" car parts.

Parts sold in NAPA shops are perfectly good parts.

Of course, they really gouge you for plastic grill and headlight parts, as they have copyrights on the design, so look alikes can be blocked.

Few car manufacturers have ever realized that if you made a car that hardly ever needed to be repaired, you would eventually outsell all the other makes.....

I have driven as private cars many Mitsubishis over the years, none of them needed much work or parts to keep running for many years.....now the compay VWs that I had..........SH*T!!! and I do not mean Shot or Shut or Shet!!! None of them could survive a month without a kiss goodnight from the VW mechanic!!!!

Any manufactured product is possessing (in average) relatively flat curve of its faults per time unit then its faults' curve abruptly climbs up (as exponent). This period between product operating start and fault-curve's bend can be longer (reliable product) either shorter (unreliable one). This period can coincidence with designed/presumed life span, i.e. after first break customer should buy new. Otherwise, there must be performed repairing process in order to make product operable again with prolonged life span. Guarantee period should be within it (if manufacturer is not altruist). That's all.

Any manufacturer does deal with this and it is up to him start to sell product with such incredibly short period of its reliability (90 days) either some getting waited come to market for improving its quality.

Every customer has its eyes to read on ware's box how long is guarantee.

I think guarantee time should be at least 1 year and life span at least 10 years for more-less costly products. For everything manufactured as ideal.

I recollect when I had occasionally needed a headset for VOIP I came cross with its on market. It was no-brand headset with microphone and volume regulator. I bought it and before gone away asked to seller: is here some guarantee? Yes,sir, he answered --- 20 metres! -What??? -Since you gone away longer than 20 metres --- guarantee expired . Btw headset works more than 5 years without any claims.

Related on not. You decide. Has anyone ever had a refrigerator that did not have a crappy slide out drawer? I can go to any store that sells cabinet hardware, and they have nothing but roller slides. Does anyone at the refrigerator manufacturers ever use one of their refrigerator drawers? Is it just me, or is the refrigerator drawer the most crappy product we live with?

Nah... but it's close...
Windows^TM whatever version anything is probably worse...it doesn't even keep your salad crisp .

They must do endless FEA on those drawers to make 'em crack if you lift 'em out when full of tomatoes ..oh yeh the door seals go too...

Del

Windows vista comes pre-broken, with no warranty...

Failure is not an option ....

It is bundled with the software

What kind of cat eats salad and tomatos?

milo