Engineers...
"It's pretty bad that a machine (especially one that has the Maytag name attached to it) should fail within a year...such a waste. You have to also wonder what the h#ll were the engineers thinking?? Bl##dy incompetence!"
Had to chime in here, because I'm a design and architecture writer, and this touches on some matters very close to the bone with me...
While engineering mistakes are certainly being made- with every kind of consumer product- it's not entirely fair to blame the engineers. Engineers, like everyone else, are hired to work under conditions defined by their employers. If the honchos at Maytag- or any other company- don't want to pay for sufficient research & development, prototyping, testing, etc., then all that engineers can do is to give the situation their most educated guess and hope for the best. Nowadays, with so much pressure to keep up stock prices, companies want the lowest possible costs and the highest possible yields. Typically, a company's brass will tell Engineering that it wants such-and-such a product, made to sell at such-and-such a price point, with such-and-such features, ready to roll by such-and-such a date. Engineering may protest that one or more or ALL those parametres are undoable, but as we all know from our own workplace experiences, bosses seldom listen to such advice. That means that you do what you have to do to make the boss happy and keep your job. Sometimes it all turns out okay, sometimes not.
There is a tremendous amount of "fast-tracking" going on in today's manufacturing world, with computerised CAD software being used to design parts and check them for fit and function before they're ever produced. That's good as far as it goes, but the computer does not yet live that can predict the effect of detergent and bleach and heat on a particular kind of plastic, over time. There are plenty of other, similar situations.
Even sadder, a company's engineers are not always its employees, not any more. Independent contractors are sometimes used to lower costs. That means no one's around to take responsibility when things go wrong, and it means that sometimes engineers don't have that responsibility in mind as they design.
It's also possible for things to be changed once they're out of Engineering's hands. A product's specs may call for three tack welds in a component, and somebody in Assembly may get the bright idea that two will do the job. That sits well with front-office brass, who would rather pay for two welds instead of three, so the change gets approved. Engineering never hears about it in time to do anything about it, and even if they did, it would take multiple meetings and a lot of politicking to get things changed back, unless those two sorry tack welds failed immediately, which they probably won't. Or someone gets the idea that everyone on the assembly line must work more "efficiently", which in the real world, usually means faster. Line workers may not get the time to do the best possible job of tack-welding, even if the number specified by Engineering is adhered to.
Worst of all, so many components are outsourced today that really meticulous quality control is next to impossible. You may design a really good control board, but what if the supplier cuts corners in his own manufacturing process? What if he shows you a high-quality agitator made of polycarbonate, then sneakily delivers one made of a cheaper plastic that won't hold up? And nowadays, if something goes wrong, the supplier may well be half a world away.
So, engineers are certainly key, but it's the suits in the front offices who are largely to blame. They want their stock price propped up in every way possible, so they don't spend the money it really takes to do things right. Case in point: the Maytag Neptune. That wasn't actually a horrendous design- it has been corrected and refined to the point that it CAN be reliable. But it should have been reliable from the get-go, by prototyping and real-world testing that would have quickly shown up the flaws in the wax motor, control board, and boot. Maytag's honchos evidently wanted a new product NOW, and didn't allow for such care in the design process. In the event, severe problems showed up in Neppies within a year- the amount of time that should have been devoted to accelerated-wear testing.
So, it's just like your job- your boss doesn't give you enough time and resources to do things right, and neither do the bosses of today's engineers, trust me. I would personally like to see companies' stock prices tied to a lot more than just the financial performance of a few prior quarters. I'd like to see investors check for product reliability, integrity in the process of sourcing components, environmental impact of the manufacturing process and the product itself, and integrity in the design and testing process. There are a whole lot of companies whose stocks would be a lot less attractive if all those matters were considered.
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