Chambers dishwasher

[firedome]

loops on the lower racks...

do have the singular advantage of seemingly being more durable when it comes to the vinyl coating, or whatever was used, being less prone to wearing off at the top and rusting the way straight pins do, they seem to go there and at joints first, as you can see in the pics, have the same problem even in some of our KAs.

 

[roto204]

they just ruined part of many appliance brands reputations

I love that wall oven!! Normally I'm not big for kitsch graphics, but that's precious. Considering the sea of boring stainless appliances in which we find ourselves, that's a delight.

I agree that the triangle-tines were one of the more aggravating executions of rack pins, but I also agree that they are more durable overall than the single pins. At least they aren't the curlicued Waste King/Thermador racks. ;-)

This machine will be rehabbed and will first participate in a very special commemorative edition of The Machines of Ill Repute that we are putting together, before finding its way into our, um, "test kitchens."

As you all know ;-), I have a soft spot for D&M. I think they found a unique niche--in many ways, they were THE freelance dishwasher design house.

I agree that they do not embody the apex of design or reliability, but I've had worse (and several). WCI's contribution to the Westinghouse and D&M acquisitions was the economizing of both and improvement of neither, and the result was hair-raisingly wretched fit and finish, piled on top of already questionable longevity.

Elements of both makers' designs persisted for years; sometimes you'd see a D&M machine with the "soil separator" module and a Westinghouse wash turret in the lower rack, with a sort of mutant wash-arm underneath. The worst of both worlds, lackadaisically repackaged. I'm surprised they didn't run with the Westinghouse design and eliminate the rack rollers. Or, use Tupperware for the door, with a duct-tape latch.

It seems to me that at the time, most manufacturers thought they were leaving money on the table when they contemplated full-line offerings. While latecomers to the game might have been aware of the prohibitive cost of R&D to market their own designs, they failed to look beyond the relative ease of outsourcing, and take into consideration that sales of appliances sourced from someone else still incurred the overhead of servicing and processing warranty requests and returns. Moreover, as John pointed out, branding was stronger with consumers, and they equated the product you sold with your marque's reputation. Maytag is a great case in point for what happens when reach exceeds grasp in this respect, and sometimes there is something to be said for doing something focused--but doing it very well.

D&M is interesting in that they did not build only one configuration of machine and rebadge it with little stylistic modification. While the underpinnings were obviously the same, they had a plethora of wash system configurations (1, 2, 3-level wash, plus or minus tower, with large wash arm under or over top rack; flat bottom rack, or tower hump with saucer shelf, with one or two humps), as well as varied pushbutton and knob styles that combined with completely different silkscreening to produce very unique looking dishwashers.

Contrast these with the rebadged GEs that you saw as Amanas or Kenmores, and contained exactly the same racking and wash system that you saw in any other BOL GE anywhere else, plus the exact same control panel and vent configuration, only with a different name stuck on the front.

GE was once touted as being one of the few manufacturers to have the production flexibility and bandwidth to produce an array of rebadges, but did they really put any effort into differentiation? Only D&M seemed to have the wherewithal to really produce different-looking machines. For all the effort GE put into the process, they could have used shipping labels and slapped a sticker on the front to cover up their own logo.

This is not to say that D&M produced much beyond amusing diversity--they certainly didn't produce quality in the least. Instead, they followed a business model that worked: Make a design that works well enough, and produce it like crazy, so that you make money without having to reinvent the wheel.

In the end, WCI wasn't afraid to take the idea to its logical conclusion: If sourcing is cheaper than development, then develop your entire product line through the acquisition of portfolios until you have a diverse array of product designs to sell, and never bother spending the time or money designing--or improving--anything at all.

 

[appnut]

Buttons left to right

Wash and Hold, Plastics Wash No Heat, Full Wash Cool Dry (Energy Save written under these 3 buttons); Full Wash Warm Dry, 150 degree Sani Wash, Heavy Duty Sani Wash.

 

[jamiel]

There is a business case which was in our MBA textbook 25 years ago on the dishwasher industry in the 1970s. I don't remember doing the case, nor the particulars but as I recall it was either a "portfolio development" or a "invest or buy" analysis...should the company invest in a new dishwasher line or re-brand other company's line. If I were home, I'd find the citation and share it...there were some interesting statistics, as I recall.

 

[electronicontrl]

Business Case

Personally I would find that dishwasher study interesting.........

 

[jamiel]

OK, found it. Textbook was Decisions in Marketing: Cases and Text by Ring, Newton, Borden and Biggadyke.

Copyright 1984.

Case 29: CPC Appliance Division, case was copyrighted in 1979.

I'll quote from the second paragraph: The principal problem, as he saw it, was severe price competition from companies selling similar private label dishwashers which were also manufactured by the Design and Manufacturing (D&M) Company. Especially threatening were the Magic Chef, Roper and Admiral brands.

The case is about pricing and how to price units within this kind of distributor basis.

 

[roto204]

Business case

That's fascinating, jamiel. I'd never thought about what would happen in the inverse case of Sears--instead of one supplier and an array of configurations from which only two entities generate sales, you have one supplier and an array of entities. How do you price a Kelvinator, Caloric, Admiral, Magic Chef, Roper, and Frigidaire, on the same floor, with essentially the same feature set, when D&M gets a percentage of everything, and each manufacturer only gets a portion of what sells?

Most third-party dealers I saw in the eighties only sold one line, like Frigidaire or Kelvinator. I could tell that it was a D&M machine, but the average consumer at least didn't have five of the same thing with different badging to stare at. (Not that they might notice, even then.)

I wonder if some of this played into Sears' departure from D&M as chief supplier prior to going live with Brand Central, to avoid just that sort of scenario with their Kenmore dishwashers. Then again, their plastic-tubbed machines lived on as Kenmores,

The Chambers has landed, thanks to Justin and Roger. It's an interesting bird, and needs repairs in strange places. The porcelain is shiny and the underside looks immaculate, but in true D&M fashion, it needs help in certain spots. I've located replacement racks (in blue) for it, minus the triangle tines (hee!). I need to pin down the impeller and seal kit, because Electrolux offers a couple different ones that look the same to me, and the Chambers model number is too old to properly cross-reference in the online suppliers' sites.

I haven't tested it yet to see if it needs the kit, but it seems like wise preventive maintenance given the issues to which these machines are prone.

I'll start working with David on restoring this during the coming weekend--it'll be a fun project and a good chance to document some of the odder aspects of this machine. I figure it's worth the investment, since it has the Total Freakish Awesomeness button.

The timer dial on this is the stuff of parts-bin legend--it has cast indicators for "A," "B," and "C" designations, but that correlates to diddly-squat on this machine's cycle selections, which lack letters.

 

[appnut]

it has cast indicators for "A," "B," and &#3

I noticed that immediately--no letters above the buttons, but the letters on the dial.

 

[jamiel]

The case is primarily about how do you price and spec a product which is relatively undifferentiated (i.e. all coming from D&M unless you as a company want to chuck it all and go with GE, Whirlpool, ... at higher prices) in a market where you've got a couple of motivating factors (new builders want cheapest possible; remodelers who need something premium to offset KitchenAid's strength).