Siemens Avantgarde

[paulinroyton]

Hi everyone. It’s been a long time since I have posted on here. I would like to share my views on Siemens Avantgarde. At the start of lockdown I decided to treat myself to a Siemens Avantgarde washing machine and heat pump tumble dryer, thinking I was buying a good quality German made appliances, sadly I was wrong.

Let’s start with the heat pump tumble dryer. The machine had a self cleaning condenser, which in theory is a good idea. However, once the dryer had finished the drying process it would leave a small amount of water in the bottom filters, as the filters on this was located at the bottom, the more I used the machine the more water was accumulated. I ended up buying a wet & dry vacuum to suck of the water. I decided to call an engineer as I wasn’t happy, the engineer came and said he would have to have a second opinion with a Senior engineer. So the Senior engineer was booked and came to look at my machine. The Senior engineer stayed for hours and came to the conclusion it was a design fault with this range of dryer and nothing could be done, I did express my opinion after paying a lot of money and having a design fault wasn’t good enough. After a long discussion with Siemens, they kindly refunded my money on the machine, which I most certainly took, lol. After paying nearly £1000 for a dryer I would of expected a good quality machine with no faults.

Anyway, let’s talk about the Siemens Avantgarde washing machine. A great machine, holds 10kg of laundry, however, the machine developed a fault with the door. A lovely engineer visited and to my horror said the machine is actually made in China under a license by Haier. I thought he was joking but he showed me the rating plate at the back of the machine that actually says, Made In China under license. There was a code, which the engineer confirmed it was made by Haier for Siemens. He did say this model was the only one, and Siemens no longer have links with Haier. I am quite annoyed in paying £1000 for a Chinese made machine. I was under the impression the expensive Siemens machine were German made. I can’t really fault the washer, it performs well, very quiet, and take so much laundry.

In future when I buy an expensive washing machine I will try my best to find where the machine is made, .

 

[logixx]

Which parts were made by Haier? Looking at the parts list, some are clearly made by BSH. I suppose parts of the front and the electronics? This washer dryer shares a similar design with the "thick" front panel and large door. It also says Made In China on the label and is still available online.

 

[launderess]

Miele had good sense to move some production over to Eastern Europe to cut costs.

Otherwise it's becoming more and more difficult to find major appliance makers who can totally avoid doing business with China for something it seems.

 

[mieleforever]

@paulinroyton

Friends of ours had a Bosch washer and dryer - but from the onset the tumble dryer had water leakage problems - they had technicians out - they went so far as to say that the load was not the correct size it should be bigger. There were quite a lot of excuses - in the end our friends decided to just return the dryer in exchange for a totally different brand.

They were very unsatisfied with the whole Bosch experience. We have a Bosch stove top and oven, and must say the oven is just so so, very expensive to buy, but is struggling to bake evenly.

Our Siemens dishwasher is also an under achiever - and you can only wash with the detergent tabs, as you would have dismal results in just using the regular powder.

It looks like Bosch these days only care to be the biggest and the quality going down the drain. Well that's my rant on Bosch/Siemens

Regards

 

[paulinroyton]

Siemens

@logixx , I’m not sure which parts are made in China, looking at my machine, it definitely looks like a modern Haier. It’s a good machine, the point I was trying to say, I thought buying an expensive Siemens it would of been made in Germany.

 

[henene4]

Is "Made in China" such an issue?

Previously, made in china was a sign for low quality.
You just wouldn't outsource if it wasn't cheaper, so everything made there was made there for coat cutting reasons.

Today, outsourcing often works somewhat different.
You still want to save cost, but often, it's not about making a component as cheap as possible.
It quite often is about bringing a product to market without major tooling and set up costs.
You basically give a manufacturer a certain spec and design. You give them a number of units to produce and a certain price target to hit.
Depending on what you spec as required and what part of the order is a variable the manufacturer optimizes towards one or another.
Then they give you an offer, and they produce - with liability clauses set during contract make up towards the manufacturer about your specs and tolerances about it - as set up.

To make the idea more graspable.

BSH could produce the motor, motor drive, shocks, drum, tub, valves, seals etc.
They would supply these parts to the manufacturer in China.

But they wanted a larger cabinet, a different door, a touch screen UI etc.
BSH dosen't have such parts in their current lineup.
So they could get them produced, shipped, set up a new modified production line - just to produce a couple dozen thousand units before reworking or cancelling that model.

So, they choose another manufacturer that has those capabilities already.
BUT they spec certain appliance life standards, and just say it can't be more expensive than x.

The chinese manufacturer now dosen't have the incentive to cost cut as far as possible - they would pay if these machines failed way more often then speced.

So, they add a bunch of staff for quality control, take part designs that already exist from their lineup and respec them up or down.
Just swapping out a bunch of resistors or caps for higher rated ones means you can reach higher quality standards on the same part without an entirely new production line.

They can do that different but similar production run on an already existing production line with only some retraining.

No major retooling, no major investment, just outsourcing expensive parts to others that already produce such parts cost effective.

Since you give them close to german production budgets similar quality standards can be reached.

The key difference:

The "old" way of outsourcing was just about making unit cost as cheap as possible regardless of quality.

The "new" way of outsourcing is about reducing investment costs.
Unit cost isn't focus - so unit quality is still as high in theory and if it isn't, you aren't on the hook.