Planned Obsolescence, Good or Bad Engineering

It's simple.
A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, so to design parts which will outlast the weakest non repairable part is wasteful.
The cat comes when parts which could easilly be repaired are designed as non-repairable, to me that's immoral and the worst type of consumerism.
Having said that, most things are repairable if you apply enough time effort and skill.
Del

Unfortunately, most people don't have the time or skill. It's the oldtimers like me who can fix almost anything. My generation was the original DIYer. Things were made to last much longer than today's products and were designed to be repairable. We were a more frugal people then. Today I see so much waste around me. I have been known to salvage things from landfills and dumps that were easily repaired.

Quote: A chain is only as strong as the weakest link. That is very true, but I'm looking for an example of purposeful obsolescence a design engineer would apply in his companies product. For example; would I be looking for a component that is known to last only a year or less? How does the design of a Rolls Royce compare to that of a Ford?

How does the design of a Rolls Royce compare to that of a Ford?.
A car is a good illustration.
Once upon a time bodies would rot way before the engine and running gear gave problems.(Especially on the Ford compared to the RR)
Bodies are much better now, it's the damn electrics that give trouble because they are too complicated, loads of unnecessary and irrelevant sensors and switches which start giving trouble after a few years. Generally the consumables are easy to change , brake pads, exhaust etc. Once major things start failing the whole thing is getting pretty poor.
Del

Quote: "it's the damn electrics that give trouble" My first car was a 1952 MGTD. A fun car, but I aleays had problems with the electrics. They were provided by Lucas. I wonder if RR had problems with Lucas electrics.

Lucas, God of darkness.

How does the design of a Rolls Royce compare to that of a Ford?

first of all you have to do a comparison the is more comparable. but, using those examples

I never drove a RR . Road conditions are alot different that it was back then.........or I like to think so.

cars being lighter, and not so much like a cruiser, it is not only how they are built, as in strength but survivability in a crash. Cars now a days are lighter, but the roads are better also.....just to name a few.

Oh yeah, about the last generation of do-it yourselfers...., I believe the past few generations probally thought that, there are a few that can still DIY.

The true approach is :

-define the need as the customer category the product is aim at will use the product and as well how much he will be ready to pay for.

- design the product to fulfil ALL requirements as well life expectancy under assumed conditions and target cost which has to be harmonized with the possible sale price. This type of design is called design to cost.

A design not taking the market specification into consideration is a big error since the company producing such a device will loose its market there are any examples when the product was cheep but bad and never again was bought.

Hi Guest,

I agree with you that very few products fails, only gadgets are rapidly disappearing. Valueable products stay for decades with some improvements or modifications but stay alive.

In the late 60s I made a primer latex for contractors. It sealed well and was a success. I quite the company and the next technical person changed the formula and the product became non-existant on the market. In 15 years later, I redid the same or similar formula to success again. 6 or 7 years later the company was absorbed by a giant "multinational" and the leading product was dead again.

Now, I am thinking the introduce to the market an improved of the last formula for my personal profits. Why? Just to prove that a good product has a long and prosperous life!

Management and ownership fail to let die a good and profitable product. The best example is "the Beetle". Someone thought that better presentation is the solution, and the story became reality. An opinion can kill a successful product!

Yes, money is a killer in many commercial successes and failures. Customer never ask for better because they don't have solutions. Companies, product makers cause changes for more profits or by ego.

Many disappeared products could be commercially successfull if people start to make them again, Gil.

at least one major auto manufacturer has been 'busted' for instituting policies of planned failure in order to increase profits through increased parts sales.

But then that is the trend. The market is flooded with cheap products because consumers want instant gratification and are no longer cognizant that 'you get what you pay for'.

You can buy a disposable lighter for less than a buck. A nice zippo will cost you $20... which is cheaper?

Disposable consumerism is killing our planet, our economy and our concept of value.

Hi Mian,

Yes, instant gratification is the present value but it became because many company for get to supply rapidly and what customers needed. Today, it's an advantage because many other companies maintain sloww services and supply.

All the best with the best and highest priced Zippo, Gil.

There are very intensive research in 2 directions: wear and fatigue. Both have reached a high level of predictability. A lot of data have been gathered about the loading in use i.e. the distribution of load magnitude versus number of apparitions (cycles). Combining the 2 informations it is possible with a fair dispersion to determine the probable life expectancy.

Fair dispersion means that the maximal and minimal life expectancies can stay in a ratio of 2..3/1. If you look in good bearing catalogue (SKF, FAG, Timken or others) you find graphs about the failure probability function of the loading as intensity and frequency of apparition. Same is valid but with other laws for gears, structures aso.

For instance a car is designed for 250.000 km and at least 15 years. It takes a lot of investigations and data sampling and of course a big lot of computations with FE

If the "widget" has bearings you design for a shorter life, based on the load ratings. Maybe a bronze bushing instead of a ball bearing or roller bearing.

Have a lower FS (Factor of Safety). This will lead to fatigue failure among other failure.

Some pieces of equipment (Such as landscaping or gardening equipment) are only used for 100 or so hours a year. If those units last 3 to 5 years, that is considered a long life.

Sadly, there is little incentive to build anything that lasts a long time (decades)

This is particularly true of CPU heatsink fans. The cheap ones you get with the CPU almost always have sleeve bearings while high quality ones have dual ball bearings. The latter are more expensive but are quieter and last much longer.

Sometimes the obsolescence is in the cosmetic appearance. For example, some guys have "beer fridges" in the garage that are so old the compressor unit is on the top, 60+ years old and still working.

Of course 'Fashion' is the worst sort of designed in obsolescence.
I suspect most men don't give a tinker's cuss about fashion (in a clothes sense, daresay we are techno fashion junkies)... I'll say no more in case I get branded 'sexist' _(again)
Del
_{(Scampers off to hide in unisex, equal opportunity nest)}

To keep economy in dynamic consumers need to spend. Engineers want to design a safe and durable device which can last for long time. But each product has its own life cycle. We cannot design or manufacture a product which lasts forever if it is in use. We can increase the life by proper maintenance. I have been using a particular brand car far the last 13 years and crossed 300,000 Km . But the engine is still in good condition. It is due to regular maintenance . Creativity and innovative ides of engineers always keep the manufactures to produce new products & systems and consumers get maximum benefit and the economy in dynamic.

I'm not so sure it's planned obsolence as much as it is minimum life expectancy. You could design something that would last very long but then becomes very expensive. So you set your goals a bit lower and target a "realistic" lifetime that is believed to be acceptable to consumers. When I used to work as a project engineer for consumer electronics our target was 10 years. That was time it was believed to be acceptable to consumers for product longevity. Within that design certain assumptions have to be made, like how many hours a day will it be used? What temperature can it be expected to operate in? How many On/Off cycles in a day? etc. So you do your calculations and in the design review you prove that under certain assumed criteria everything should last until the 10 year point. Then the product goes to the real world and you have units that barely get used and last forever and others that get used 3 times as often as predicted and fail after 5 years. So you may call this planned obsolence but in some ways it more supply and demand as consumers often won't or can't pay for an item that works forever.

Shawn

Last spring I dug an old reel mower out from under my stairs. It was buried behind many panes of glass from old storm windows and doors.

I've have been using the mower and enjoy it.. The company that made it in the US is long gone.

The main components are well designed and well cast.

I searched on line for any information.. The closest image I could find was of another very similar mower..

Patented in 1885..

It's pretty awesome to use a lawnmower that may be well over 100-120 years old.. give or take..

I've thought about taking it apart and prettying it up a bit, but it looks great, cut's great.. Why mess with it?

...All of this before material testing and performance calculations.. go figure

I build Axial flow pumps to last for 50 years or more. I am old enough to have adjusted to things that work better than others in this reguard. The simple answer is that many things can be constructed to last longer and work better than me but up front cost could be high.

Made to Break

http://www.amazon.com/Made-Break-Technology-Obsolescence-America/dp/0674022033

I didn't do enough digging to find a proper article on the book, but this book is a well researched and historical account of the evolution of planned obsolescence.

While it can be hard to believe from a designers perspective, the overt manipulation of public opinion and product life-cylce is very well documented if you decode the marketing-speak.

Good thread.

For me it all makes perfect sense for some items. Take one item that we use on a daily basis... any item. Now picture what item was used 10, 15, 20 or more years ago. There is a vast difference. Technology changes.

If I were offered a car that was designed to last 40 years, but at a similar cost of 40 years worth of vehicles, even a discounted cost, I would decline. There are too many upgrades that quickly turn a state-of-the-art item into an antique. If you aren't convinced, simply substitute in computers or phones instead. Some items would not just become antiquated but completely obsolete (such as 8 tracks and vinyl).

There is a design lifetime as well as a technologically useful lifetime. Hopefully the products I buy have the two close to each other.

just because something is predestined to be obsolete (in our market) in as little as 6 months is no reason to build it poorly. Sure from a purely corporate mindset it makes perfect sense, but to assume the corporate mindset is aligned with reality is dangerous. If your obsolete phone doesn't have enough bells and whistles for you but still performs it's primary task adequetely then it can be re-used by someone whose technological requirements are not as high as yours. if on the other hand your phone is only built to last 6 months then giving it to someone else to use is just pawning off your garbage to fill someone else's land fill... This is irresponsible in the extreme, and it is driven primarily by vanity, not actual need. My wife's 7 year old laptop is a geniune piece of garbage, but I don't need to run autocad, play top of the line graphics driven games or plan a shuttle mission on it so it is perfectly functional for our needs; which it wouldn't be if it had died at obsolescence.

Filling the land-fills with our 'need' for the latest greatest technological conveniences is what got us in the environmental mess we're in now.

I agree with many of your points. There are many things that are obsolete that still serve purposes or can be re-made into something useful. ("Make" magazine is one of my fav's for this.) I am all for a more robustly designed lawn mower that actually lasts or a car that pushes the test of time.

But that being said, the technological advances I refer to aren't just the ones adding bells and whistles, but the ones that change how we operate.... that is, what good is an 8track player designed to last 1000years? You can't buy new media for it and it would outlast any that you own. The robustness required for such a design is what would be a waste. Perhaps requiring 10x the materials. So now the waste on converting up from 8tracks is tenfold.

I think it is just as wasteful and environmentally irresponsible to design a product beyond the expected useful market lifetime. And your point is well taken, this is not an excuse to create poor designs... everyone loves the $20 DVD player until it breaks 30 days later.

You are absolutely correct, because I am trying to drive home a point I am disregarding the finer points of reality.

Of course there is a point of diminishing returns with all things, I just don't think that this point figures at all in the current marketing models.

... want to post more thoughts, but no time right now.

When was the last time any of us upgraded our claw hammer? Have any of you tried fire v2.0? It makes fire 1.0 look like a caveman's tool. The ultimate "planned obsolescence" seems to be the human race. It's not conspiratorial. We are just a short-sighted product. Americans have increasingly become a wasteful lot in many regards; witnessed by those of us born in the 40's and 50's.

Yes you design to the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of some component to get the life span. The other way that is quite common today is to just STOP making some critical consumable part...like the battery! That's one of my favorite rants about perfectly good portable power tools that I can no longer get batteries for because the manufacturer has decided that a BIGGER battery is better and no-one would ever want to keep using the perfectly good tool they bought last year! Thank goodness that you can still find them on the web!

You nailed my irritation with printers. I've had to replace perfectly good printers because they stopped making the particular type of ink cartridge... ughhh.

As to the guest's comment above about things not being planned... it is the whole reason there are LAWS in place (here in the US) that require car manufacturers to produce parts for 7 (I think..) years after production. I don't know the exact history behind the law but I imagine it had to do with upset people with 2 or 3 year old cars that they couldn't fix due to the manufacturer not producing parts.

It used to be 20 years for cars...and I believe the US Gov still requires 20 years for support of products...used to drive us nuts and costs a bunch to keep spares for obsolete computers. To say nothing about trying to keep the expertise available theses days...ahh the world of consulting!

In some circles that kind of product support is called "good customer service". In others it is considered a beauracratic profit reducer... depends which side of the coin you're on...

IMHO anyone producing a product that does not decompose in an environmentally beneficial manner that is not expected to last more than 'x' years should be subjected to an EPA fine and that during those 'x' years it is reasonable to expect serviceability. Yes, I'm willing to endure the cost increase on most of my favorite products, I will also be enjoying the increased quality and durability of the things I buy and the environmental improvements that result because suddenly it doesn't make more sense to just throw it out and get a new one.

Of course this won't work across the board, and any attempt by our brilliant leadership to enact such a scheme will undoubtedly have the opposite effect, pray God they aren't reading this.

I can remember back in the olden days, my ole papa who owned a garage said, "son if you want to know the difference between a ford and a chevy go down to the Railroad crossing and sit down and watch the cars. The man in the ford will speed up to cross and the man in the chevy will slow down." there is a truth in this statement. As we search for comfort most times we give up toughness and durability. It is not as much the product but us. Being a very good Mechanic, I have to resign when the electronics forbids me to repair,but, I love the convience they provide. Planned to fail, 'no'. The material used is not capable of the long term use like we are use to in the olden times.

I just happened to run into an interesting situation here. My truck with 24K miles on it had a broken "support bar" that holds the windshield wiper motor and the attached "transmission shafts" that make the wipers work. The broken shaft was attached with a few bolts which were loose, probably from the day of assembly. To replace the one piece that's broken, requires the purchase of the entire assembly, including the wiper motor! The actual cost of the broken piece should be around $10 I'd guess...my cost to buy the entire assembly, and then toss the good parts I don't need (like the motor), only $300! I was prepared for this and welded the broken part for a few cents of electric power.

I fully understand why I can't buy the one part, the assembly was probably made by a company that has the parts available only to it. That protects them. The fact that this part broke was a fluke, and that's another reason it's not available. The parts that are designated as FRU (Field Replaceable Units) are those most likely to fail. In this case it would be the motor itself that's expected to fail/wear out, not the shaft that broke...therefore the FRU is the entire assembly. All part of the Planned Obsolescence cycle.

Yeah (good answer), but it's also part of the big company mentality.
If someone phones our company saying they have a screw loose (tee hee) or a small part missing etc we'll probably just post one the same day, no fuss, no paperwork, no charge.
Whereas just trying to get a part number from a big company can take weeks, often because it mr nobody's job.
Del

Del's comment just reminded me.

I bought a gas grill about 8 years ago. Got it home and went to assemble and found a part broken. Called up their customer service and with absolutely no quibbling the part was on my doorstep in about 3 days. FANTASTIC!

With all the complaints I thought I'd share a good experience.

This could take several weeks.

My laptop is still quite functional and young, yet the battery is useful for little more than switching outlets and the left mouse button has developed a bit of a ratchet sound and feel..What's next?

Cell phones?.. please.. Remember when they were actually screwed together and tough?

If you Google "Rugged MP3 player".?. Not very impressive results

I could continue, but I'll leave it with... my kingdom for components are built to respect the consumer rather than serve the corporation!

Cell phones screwed together??? that's crazy talk...

Remember when Radio shack didn't sell cell phones, but rather modestly priced decent quality components.... ahh those were the days...