Planned Obsolescence

I had the opposite experience recently that shed some light on why they make products designed to break. We had a leaky shower fixture in the house (built in the 1920's) so we had a plumber com in and fix it. Turns out the fixture was as old as the house and it only needed a single gasket fixed. When we asked him why other valves weren't built like that he replied, "In the last 70 years the only repair on it was a $5 gasket. I probably won't have to fix it again in my lifetime. Needless to say you'll probably never replace it or have to service it again. The company that built it is probably out of business because they couldn't sell new products and plumbers probably refused to install it."

I'm hoping that the new WEE standard in Europe helps to combat this though.

Actually, having been involved in several appliance design projects, I can say that the primary objective is cost. Major appliances are designed to hit certain price points. When you go shopping for your new washer, you'll probably find that the price of new washers hasn't moved appreciably since you bought the last one some umpty years ago, unless you go top-of-the-line where people are willing to pay more for features. The mid-line appliance price points are pretty fixed. This means that the engineers need to keep taking cost out of the thing just to stand still relative to inflation, so yes, they do push both designs and materials closer to the edge than years ago. Better design tools also make it possible to design closer to the edge.

This sometimes backfires, as it did with the GE rotary compressor fiasco in the late eighties/early nineties, when the company had to replace thousands of refrigerator compressors that failed early due to poor design. The new compressor was intended to take a bunch of cost out of the box. It ended up costing the company a LOT of money.

A domestic washer is designed with a short life time, since if will be used a few times a week for washing.

A commercial washer that is used 16-24 hours per day is made very differently.

Take a look at the washers in coin operated laundries. They are a lot more robust than domestic ones.

Quite often items are designed for a life of say 5 years. In the old days they made sealed refrigerators that could last 30-40 years as long as you did not penetrate the heat transfer coils with corrosion of knives etc.

As the other guy says, take out everything to reach a price point. That is the way in the USA.

In Europe stuff is a lot more expensive and generally lasts longer.

We had similar. The bearing failed at less than 12 months and was replaced under warranty. I assumed since the machine was imported from Korea the failure cause may have been false brinelling from transit vibration (all imported cars get it in the wheel bearings). The problem with that theory is the next bearing didn't last either, another warranty repair, then the third item started clunking almost immediately, but it is a smart bugger it won't clunk when the repair agent is around. The solution we use is buy a 5 year warrantee when appliances (and cars) are first purchesed. I don't know if that is optimal because some of the warrantees are insurance based but better companies such as Panasonic and Electrolux offer extended factory warranty.

First, next time buy a Bosch. Second, two reply comments nailed it, I'll try to summarize: A)You bought what you paid for. B) manufacturers are forced by competition and people who buy what they pay for to match function required with minimum cost for life expectancy 1 day post warranty. The compressor example was a case of things going wrong in the attempt. As an Automotive supplier who tries hard to make things that last, I can say like water finding its level, people always get what they pay for (and deserve it).

The aspect that hasn't been mentioned, although approached in the shower valve example, is that all manufacturing is sales/growth focussed. A machine that is repairable will only be repaired when the cost to do so is perceived to be less than the cost of a replacement unit. If labor cost is in the neighborhood of $100/hr then it is unlikely an appliance will be repaired for three hours labor and a $20 bearing when a new washer with a new warranty can be had for just a few bucks more than the prospective repair would cost. The mfr benefits from increased volume, the appliance distribution chain benefits from higher volume, cheaper installation help vs. trained technical repair help, a turnaround time of an hour or less between truck rolls: all contribute to the production of cheaper, more cheaply made, disposable products.

And the CO2 in the air from all this essentially wasteful activity steadily increases.

Many people are getting DIY savvy now so a designer could make things easier to repair with DIYers in mind. Better design for a better future.

planned obsolescence? I know Maytag stands on a reputation of durability and longlife in their products and they were doing well enough for Whirlpool to risk buying them out. I own a Maytag washer and dryer which is about twenty years old and they were 13 years old when I bought them and I have had zero problems with them.

My advice is buyer beware. Buy from a company whose philosophy you trust instead of jumping on the fad feature train. Some people buy an appliance because it is prettier than another. I say buy the appliance you know will last if you want it to look pretty decorate it yourself. If you want race car colors take it to a body shop to have it painted before you install it. Change of color does not violate a repair warranty.

Most major appliance still last a good long time if they're not abused. Interestingly, if you look at data from e.g., consumer reports, Maytag's reputation for durability is self-generated. Their failure rates are about the same as everybody elses.

Wow, I got a google alert keyed to "planned obsolescence" that brought me to this very cool professional sight for engineers. I wish I'd known about it before I wrote my last book. I'd like to say that your discussion of "planned obsolescence" repeats nearly exactly the terms of a discussion about p.o. in radios and yes, washing machines from Designer Magazine in the 1950s. The points you make were professional concerns and thoughts of those earlier engineers and --because the mags are not readily available-- I try to recount the debate in some detail in my book about the history of planned obsolescence MADE TO BREAK: Technology and Obsolescence in America. I mention this here because I'm anxious to get feedback from professional engineers and designers about this issue. In the 50s most engineers employed as engineers --not administrators-- felt that p.o. cheated the consumer. But death dating is a fact of life and so too is the inevitable end of life for any product. I'd like to know more about how contemporary engineers feel about design for disassembly (aka green design) and whether it can be incorporated into a feasible economic model and also if your own companies are attempting to do this. Please feel free to reply at drgiles@shaw.ca. Top responses will receive a free autographed copy of MADE TO BREAk, I promise.

ultimately the designer made a bad decision just as you say to favor mfg over repairability. He/She was too lazy or too incompetent to find a solution that works for both. spot welding saves mfg time and assembly labor over using fasteners but ther are thousands of ways to connect one thing to another and this designer took the easy way out. It would be nice to have a wbsite we could consult on consumer products to give us stats and ratings before we buy without having to pour through endless ads to get to the info.

You're right!!! Some (most) stuff is built to break. Just look at a floresent light bulb. It's just a glass tube full of gas that glows when electricity passes through it. At each end is an electrode where the electricity flows from/to. These electrodes could be made a lot stronger and use better material; in fact, they could be made so good that they could "burn" for at least 200 years straight without burnning out. The original designers realized this and also realized that if they made them this way they would make a lot of them for a few years and go out of business because they would not need to be replaced. All of them after that are made to burn out after a short period of time.