Anyone else fed up of mass-produced, disposable carp?

[Doobedoo]

But as per my example above I’m not sure if mandatory 5-10 year warranties would help. Most manufacturers will simply gamble that their cheap machine will last 5-10 years than create a single expensive machine that definitely will as the financial incentive is likely to be to gamble. But that way also means you build more machines to replace those that do break down in the 5-10 year period.

What you need is a maximum profit margin % and a minimum cost. So a £1000 machine with a max 20% margin must cost £800 to make, the assumption being that the £800 machine will last longer and thus stop the manufacturer producing 4 £200 machines instead.

But then that is essentially like saying washing machine manufacturing should be state controlled as every machine will be £1000 to buy and £800 to produce, thus eliminating the point of a competitive market.

So they would need to be monitored and those that fall below the required standard will be punished, in the same way as those not meeting the required environmental pollution standards etc.

A similar thing has happened with the car industry. It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of cars running on electric was a fanciful pipe dream. But here we are and it didn’t happen over night either. Maybe small steps are better than huge leaps?

It’s not beyond the capabilities of the human species, we have achieved much greater feats.

 

[mrochester]

So they would need to be monitored and those that fall below the required standard will be punished, in the same way as those not meeting the required environmental pollution standards etc.

A similar thing has happened with the car industry. It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of cars running on electric was a fanciful pipe dream. But here we are and it didn’t happen over night either. Maybe small steps are better than huge leaps?

It’s not beyond the capabilities of the human species, we have achieved much greater feats.

I agree, and like any legislation someone would no doubt find a way around it that defeats the purpose of it.

 

[Doobedoo]

I agree, and like any legislation someone would no doubt find a way around it that defeats the purpose of it.

Lol no doubt about it. Again that is an inherent part of capitalism, money rules. Maybe one day we will evolve more than just our technology.

 

[Fusion]

What you need is a maximum profit margin % and a minimum cost. So a £1000 machine with a max 20% margin must cost £800 to make, the assumption being that the £800 machine will last longer and thus stop the manufacturer producing 4 £200 machines instead.

But then that is essentially like saying washing machine manufacturing should be state controlled as every machine will be £1000 to buy and £800 to produce, thus eliminating the point of a competitive market.

You’d have manufacturers making things in the slowest/least efficient way possible to bump up production cost- half of the cost of making a machine is probably labour.

 

[mrochester]

You’d have manufacturers making things in the slowest/least efficient way possible to bump up production cost- half of the cost of making a machine is probably labour.

Which is to my point above, manufacturers will find ways around the legislation.

 

[Fusion]

I do agree with the sentiment that things should be better made and longer lasting. It’s correct that quite often, the changes required to improve reliability are not particularly expensive. Accountants/business managers tend to have the final say sadly, rather than engineers.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

Both you and foxeye are quite obviously not engineers. Quality costs money, the ultimate expression of that is Space, where everything is qualified to death as the price of failure when sending things out to Space is quite eye watering. I’m an engineer and we design products that are contracted to last 10 to 15 years. That doesn’t mean 10 to 15 years of constant use but use of a certain amount of hours within a 10 to 15 year period.

Every component has a lifespan and within that lifespan the environment shortens that lifespan even further, then you have usage profile which affects life, component derating etc. Even if you had a brand new product, say a washing machine as that’s what people have been talking about so far, so say you buy this brand new washing machine and you left it in the box and never used it, there is no guarantee that product will even work after say 15 years as components age over time and is dependant on reasonable storage conditions.

So yes, you can engineer things to last a lot longer but it comes at a price. At one end you can either select your components and qualify them using accelerated life tests before you use them or at the other end you select components and go at risk and accept a certain amount of failures with a set low level of qualification for safety and warranty against that risk and all the steps in between where you only qualify safety critical parts etc. Quality normally doesn’t come for free

I think that's what people are saying though, there should be a minimum 'quality' standard that is higher than what we're used to. If that means a higher price then so be it.

Wouldn't it also be better if things were more modular, had shared/similar designs, interchangeable parts for basic things and platform-based designs like car manufacturers use but more across the board, as in, between different manufacturers, perhaps this will happen in the future as resources become scarce/critical? I suspect the EU regulation around making white goods repairable will hopefully incentivise this as it would be annoying if spare parts prices made the parts not worth repairing even if they could be.

I appreciate this is a long shot but it would be good to get to even a half way point.

 

[Doobedoo]

Why is it that certain countries are renowned for quality or reliability such as German engineering or Japanese cars, where as China are a byword for poor quality.

China assemble products as cheaply as possible using the cheapest components, that we all can agree on. But does that mean that Germans and the Japanese use the most expensive component or just that they take a bit more pride or whatever. Now a German or Japanese car has not priced the lower classes out the car market, quite the opposite. Then again you have Range Rover a symbol of premium luxury and they currently have a reputation of being quite unreliable.

It’s about standards that’s why the Japanese and Germans have a particular kind of reputation. The Chinese don’t care they are the ones making all the money so they produce as much crap as we’ll buy.

 

[Bear]

I think that's what people are saying though, there should be a minimum 'quality' standard that is higher than what we're used to. If that means a higher price then so be it.

Wouldn't it also be better if things were more modular, had shared/similar designs, interchangeable parts for basic things and platform-based designs like car manufacturers use but more across the board, as in, between different manufacturers, perhaps this will happen in the future as resources become scarce/critical? I suspect the EU regulation around making white goods repairable will hopefully incentivise this as it would be annoying if spare parts prices made the parts not worth repairing even if they could be.

I appreciate this is a long shot but it would be good to get to even a half way point.

Don’t you think manufacturers haven’t thought of modularity and design reuse? Of course they have as it is one of the cost drivers to the manufacturing process but there are pros and cons to modularity and design reuse. The pros are pretty obvious but the cons are probably less clear and is dependant on the product and the product cycle. Mobile phones for instance, you could for instance use the same bodies and screens etc but the consumer insists on incremental improvements like better screens and different styling and more innovation. You only need to look in the mobile phone section on here to see the whining on new phone releases, that it looks exactly the same as last year or haven’t improved the camera etc. and on top of this they expect a new model with new innovations every year!

It works for your example of cars as people don’t expect a new release of a brand new model of car every year so technology changes doesn’t affect the car all that much so parts sharing is feasible over a longer period.

With respect to the minimum quality standard, this is also dependant on what product you are talking about. With any fast moving product with yearly product releases, any new component designed there is an associated risk with respect to reliability as it is an unknown component. It is one of the reasons that components used in Space programs are not so cutting edge as people would expect. If you want reliability, you wouldn’t choose to use a brand new component with unknown heritage but you would use an old component that has a well known history working in the field for millions of hours as an example. If a company chose to sell something which doesn’t have the bells and whistles, has the same design it has had for 10+ years but would last forever do you think it would have much interest?

 

[Bear]

Why is it that certain countries are renowned for quality or reliability such as German engineering or Japanese cars, where as China are a byword for poor quality.

China assemble products as cheaply as possible using the cheapest components, that we all can agree on. But does that mean that Germans and the Japanese use the most expensive component or just that they take a bit more pride or whatever. Now a German or Japanese car has not priced the lower classes out the car market, quite the opposite. Then again you have Range Rover a symbol of premium luxury and they currently have a reputation of being quite unreliable.

It’s about standards that’s why the Japanese and Germans have a particular kind of reputation. The Chinese don’t care they are the ones making all the money so they produce as much crap as we’ll buy.

A lot of it is down to processes and automation. Automation gives you repeatability, so you know that what is being built is virtually the same every time, so for instance populating circuit boards. Using pick and place machines that have automated optical inspection, roving probe testing, x raying solder joints etc. setting up flow lines, Kabans this all requires very large investment and having very good and established supply chains. The Chinese on the other hand solder a lot of their circuit boards as labour is cheap so why invest huge sums in automation?

As an aside, you can get quality built products in China, you just have to pay for it but many companies choose not to.

 

[Doobedoo]

As an aside, you can get quality built products in China, you just have to pay for it but many companies choose not to.

I think that’s the issue that people have. It’s not the Chinese per say, they are just making products that are in demand. It’s the companies that choose to source parts from China with the sole purpose of cutting costs.

An example I can give is this. We used to deal with a Danish company called EWJ Teknik where we had sole distribution rights for their commercial brake testers. They started off as a Company setup by a man who eventually passed control over to his son. To begin with they were a very good company who made good products, that was until things started to take a turn for the worse.

Long story short they started to source electronic boards and components from China we believe in order to save costs. It got so bad that we ended up taking their brand new equipment such as decoder boards etc and sending them straight to a guy who was an electronic wizard. He identified weak components through repairs he used to do for us and modified the brand new boards to correct the issues, that weren’t their before they started sourcing from elsewhere. The funniest thing was there own sales brochure, which stated the benefit of duplex drive chains in order to reduce chain stretch and all the other associated issues caused by poor quality chain or simplex chain. Which chain do think they used on their later models of brake tester? Yeah simplex.

Some issues can be avoided and some of the solutions turn out not to be that expensive to implement. That is the side of it that I take issue with. Avoidable cost cutting measures that doesn’t benefit me, you or the end user but has an impact on things like the environment.

 

[Bear]

I think that’s the issue that people have. It’s not the Chinese per say, they are just making products that are in demand. It’s the companies that choose to source parts from China with the sole purpose of cutting costs.

An example I can give is this. We used to deal with a Danish company called EWJ Teknik where we had sole distribution rights for their commercial brake testers. They started off as a Company setup by a man who eventually passed control over to his son. To begin with they were a very good company who made good products, that was until things started to take a turn for the worse.

Long story short they started to source electronic boards and components from China we believe in order to save costs. It got so bad that we ended up taking their brand new equipment such as decoder boards etc and sending them straight to a guy who was an electronic wizard. He identified weak components through repairs he used to do for us and modified the brand new boards to correct the issues, that weren’t their before they started sourcing from elsewhere. The funniest thing was there own sales brochure, which stated the benefit of duplex drive chains in order to reduce chain stretch and all the other associated issues caused by poor quality chain or simplex chain. Which chain do think they used on their later models of brake tester? Yeah simplex.

Some issues can be avoided and some of the solutions turn out not to be that expensive to implement. That is the side of it that I take issue with. Avoidable cost cutting measures that doesn’t benefit me, you or the end user but has an impact on things like the environment.

I completely agree but that isn’t always engineered in. As an example, I have designed things tested and qualified the item then handed over to production. Once in production, unless something goes wrong I don’t hear anything more about it. A year later I hear all manner of failures are cropping up so I go out to see what the issues are and what I find is procurement has tried to drive the cost down per item and replaced some of the components that I selected for supposedly cheaper like for like replacements, only they don’t perform the same which was why they started failing and they didn’t get the engineer that designed the thing to trial and sign off on the updates. The world is ran by bean counters and that’s the issue.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

Don’t you think manufacturers haven’t thought of modularity and design reuse? Of course they have as it is one of the cost drivers to the manufacturing process but there are pros and cons to modularity and design reuse. The pros are pretty obvious but the cons are probably less clear and is dependant on the product and the product cycle. Mobile phones for instance, you could for instance use the same bodies and screens etc but the consumer insists on incremental improvements like better screens and different styling and more innovation. You only need to look in the mobile phone section on here to see the whining on new phone releases, that it looks exactly the same as last year or haven’t improved the camera etc. and on top of this they expect a new model with new innovations every year!

It works for your example of cars as people don’t expect a new release of a brand new model of car every year so technology changes doesn’t affect the car all that much so parts sharing is feasible over a longer period.

I was thinking modular approach across vendors, I guess that's a pipe dream though. Surely it would reduce R&D costs? I guess it adds complexity in other areas. Let's take laptop chargers as an example, why do all manufacturers need to have different connectors, can't there be standards for battery types/sizes? Even within the same brand you see different styles of connector, not just due to the size of the battery either. Am I being too simplistic?

I was also thinking about modular furniture etc, this already exists but it isn't as commonplace as cheap flat pack stuff.

With respect to the minimum quality standard, this is also dependant on what product you are talking about. With any fast moving product with yearly product releases, any new component designed there is an associated risk with respect to reliability as it is an unknown component. It is one of the reasons that components used in Space programs are not so cutting edge as people would expect. If you want reliability, you wouldn’t choose to use a brand new component with unknown heritage but you would use an old component that has a well known history working in the field for millions of hours as an example. If a company chose to sell something which doesn’t have the bells and whistles, has the same design it has had for 10+ years but would last forever do you think it would have much interest?

Perhaps in the long term we won't have yearly product releases?

Regarding bells and whistles, perhaps when the next significant natural disaster strikes (climate change?) then people's priorities will change. Ironically, it's this very attitude that has most likely increased the rate of climate change.

 

[mrochester]

I was thinking modular approach across vendors, I guess that's a pipe dream though. Surely it would reduce R&D costs? I guess it adds complexity in other areas. Let's take laptop chargers as an example, why do all manufacturers need to have different connectors, can't there be standards for battery types/sizes? Even within the same brand you see different styles of connector, not just due to the size of the battery either. Am I being too simplistic?

I was also thinking about modular furniture etc, this already exists but it isn't as commonplace as cheap flat pack stuff.




Perhaps in the long term we won't have yearly product releases?

Regarding bells and whistles, perhaps when the next significant natural disaster strikes (climate change?) then people's priorities will change. Ironically, it's this very attitude that has most likely increased the rate of climate change.

USBC is the standard laptop charger port.

 

[Sudden]

I was thinking modular approach across vendors, I guess that's a pipe dream though. Surely it would reduce R&D costs? I guess it adds complexity in other areas. Let's take laptop chargers as an example, why do all manufacturers need to have different connectors, can't there be standards for battery types/sizes? Even within the same brand you see different styles of connector, not just due to the size of the battery either. Am I being too simplistic?

I was also thinking about modular furniture etc, this already exists but it isn't as commonplace as cheap flat pack stuff.




Perhaps in the long term we won't have yearly product releases?

Regarding bells and whistles, perhaps when the next significant natural disaster strikes (climate change?) then people's priorities will change. Ironically, it's this very attitude that has most likely increased the rate of climate change.

Similar approach across vendors - it would reduce overall R&D costs no doubt, but that R&D is also how one company is more competitive than the other and offers distinguishing features as a reason why someone should buy their products. Having the same exact thing would invalidate that. I can also see potential issues with anti-competition laws if companies are sharing what they are developing (and subsequently, how much that should cost). It does depend on the precise technology though - maybe there are somethings that are so standard that there won't be any difference (e.g. - USB ports) so makes sense for everyone to use the same, but tricky to expand it to everything.

Yearly product releases doesn't make sense to me with each product either, but there are always some small developments. More about changing mentalities. Other than phones though (and maybe GFX cards for some people on here ), I don't think there are products that most people think they must buy the next one every 'x' years? At least personally, I tend to buy new only where there are new features that would make a difference to my use of it rather than just because there has been a small incremental upgrade which makes little practical difference.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

USBC is the standard laptop charger port.

Hmm I guess my laptop that old now that it isn't USB powered. You're right about the Lenovos that I've used.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

Similar approach across vendors - it would reduce overall R&D costs no doubt, but that R&D is also how one company is more competitive than the other and offers distinguishing features as a reason why someone should buy their products. Having the same exact thing would invalidate that. I can also see potential issues with anti-competition laws if companies are sharing what they are developing (and subsequently, how much that should cost). It does depend on the precise technology though - maybe there are somethings that are so standard that there won't be any difference (e.g. - USB ports) so makes sense for everyone to use the same, but tricky to expand it to everything.

Yearly product releases doesn't make sense to me with each product either, but there are always some small developments. More about changing mentalities. Other than phones though (and maybe GFX cards for some people on here ), I don't think there are products that most people think they must buy the next one every 'x' years? At least personally, I tend to buy new only where there are new features that would make a difference to my use of it rather than just because there has been a small incremental upgrade which makes little practical difference.

What about sofas though, if they were modular you could just replace the foam when worn out or the covers/add elements when you fancy a new style? Evidently I'm not an expert on any of these topics and I appreciate you can do changes with the right DIY knowledge

 

[GarethSouthgate]

At least personally, I tend to buy new only where there are new features that would make a difference to my use of it rather than just because there has been a small incremental upgrade which makes little practical difference.

I'm still playing on a PS3 it was free as well! Win.

 

[Sudden]

What about sofas though, if they were modular you could just replace the foam when worn out or the covers/add elements when you fancy a new style? Evidently I'm not an expert on any of these topics and I appreciate you can do changes with the right DIY knowledge

Hahaha - yeah, that's a fair point. For some reason I just automatically think tech if I hear R&D so didn't consider that kind of stuff. Probably explains why I'm on this forum

I think when companies start talking to each other about products, competition laws become quite tricky to navigate, so they may need weakening in order for collaboration across manufacturers to happen. This could lead to competition issues of course, so I guess a government call on which is more important. Tthough I'm a lawyer, so I tend to see that side of things . I have seen modular stuff from the same company, but not across manufacturers. I think it's definitely more doable outside of tech, but needs more thought. You have third party products which work across different companies, and they make businesses out of the desire for people who want that ability to standardise, so there is a demand for it!


And damn - PS3. That's something. I thought my 6 year old PC was impressive, but it definitely wasn't free

 

[Angilion]

So they would need to be monitored and those that fall below the required standard will be punished, in the same way as those not meeting the required environmental pollution standards etc. [..]

Like almost everyone here, you're considering only profit per sale and overlooking the fact that selling things far less often will also affect income. If a widget is replaced on average every 2 years the profit per sale needs to at least cover 2 years of costs (payroll, maintainence, etc). If a widget is replaced on average every 10 years the profit per sale needs to cover at least 10 years of costs.

I think there are only two ways to implement that sort of scheme that might possibly work:

1) A communist economy with goods produced by the state as a service to the people. A real communist economy, not the failed versions used in various authoritarian states that were allegedly trying to implement communism.

2) Most people not owning anything much, not even basic household items, because everything is much too expensive for most people to buy. Most people can't pay £1000 for a washing machine (and I think £1000 is probably too low an estimate of the cost of the cheapest washing machine under proposed changes). So most people would be locked into renting almost everything. Renting their TV. Renting their washing machine. Renting their boiler. Renting their carpets. Renting pretty much everything and paying a high price for it. The rent on a £1000 washing machine would be much higher than the rent on a £200 washing machine. That's so open to abuse that it would require such a degree of state control that you're pretty much back to a communist economy.

Maybe a communist economy would be better. Maybe it isn't impossible.