Topic: Grumblings about modern technology

[eigenvector]

I'm an engineer, and as such people assume I embrace everything new.  I don't, which is why I'm writing this on a forum dedicated to a motorcycle that went out of production almost 40 years ago.

I keep seeing vehicles around town, modern vehicles - after 2010, with burned out headlights, taillights, markers.  What the heck?!  I thought the move to LEDs was intended to make everything last longer.  It's appearing to do the opposite.  I see Audis, Jeeps, pretty much anything that packs an LED seems like they fail far more frequently than the old incandescents.  The cost to replace them!

The headlights on my 2000 Ranger lasted ~120,000 miles.  The turn signals about 150,000.  I'm still on the original taillights.  My fellow engineers should be leading us forward, not backward.

[FunJimmy]

Ya, get that fixed eh?

[scrapvalue]

I am pretty sure they are paid to make things not last.  Seems like the real profit in the auto industry is replacement parts.

[eigenvector]

You are utterly incorrect if you think engineers and designers deliberately design things to wear out unnecessarily.

There are reasons why things are designed to wear and be replaced, but for profitability is not one of them.

[Steve F]

Maybe not designed to fail early, but designed to meet budget.  Cheap is what cheap does.  The bean counters have ultimate authority in the production of an item.

[Buckskin Bandit]

It not only applies to cars, but everything else too! A quality pair of cowboy boots is impossible to find for a reasonable price ($300 or under).. Tools, household appliances, you name it, it's all turning into expensive junk.

[FunJimmy]

You are utterly incorrect if you think engineers and designers deliberately design things to wear out unnecessarily.

There are reasons why things are designed to wear and be replaced, but for profitability is not one of them.

Planed obsolescence is indeed an engineered reality.

[cb650]

And a "standard" headlite was how much back in the day.   Now?   OH and it might need a new housing!!!!

[333]

You are utterly incorrect if you think engineers and designers deliberately design things to wear out unnecessarily.

There are reasons why things are designed to wear and be replaced, but for profitability is not one of them.

Planed obsolescence is indeed an engineered reality.

Not necessarily. If a product doesn't last a reasonable amount of time, or fails and the fix is unreasonably expensive, a customer isn't likely to buy that brand again. I'm living this myself this week. I'm having a relatively small part replaced on my 10 year old refrigerator.  FOR THE THIRD TIME!!   I will not be buying my next one from them again.

[FunJimmy]

You are utterly incorrect if you think engineers and designers deliberately design things to wear out unnecessarily.

There are reasons why things are designed to wear and be replaced, but for profitability is not one of them.

Planed obsolescence is indeed an engineered reality.

Not necessarily. If a product doesn't last a reasonable amount of time, or fails and the fix is unreasonably expensive, a customer isn't likely to buy that brand again. I'm living this myself this week. I'm having a relatively small part replaced on my 10 year old refrigerator.  FOR THE THIRD TIME!!   I will not be buying my next one from them again.

That's a sign of poor quality, not planned obsolescence.
Everything has an engineered service life. It's intentional and a fact.

[DH]

Why is a microprocessor needed for nearly EVERY damn thing on an automobile? The buyer has no recourse, you buy a car, here's what you get no exceptions.
You want more/less heat or a/c? A computer sends commands to electric motors that move plenum doors
in different directions that divert airflow to different places. What the he@# happened to the slide lever
and cable arrangement? Seems like it did a good job for the life of the car. And now I need a back up camera (touted as this great option on new cars) I think i understand that one tho, without it, you cant see S#$% out the back window. Do we really need our vehicles to send us an e mail reminder for an oil change?
Why is it necessary to eliminate the crankcase dipstick and replace it with an electronic indicator incorpor
ated into an electronic dash cluster that routinely dies, costing hundreds to repair? Why do windows crack open and closed, prior to, or after opening or closing a door? Why is it now over 100.00 to have an oil change? Do we need electronic emergency brake actuation? Apparently the old system needed complicating., so yes, I guess we do. And when the right side headlight goes out, and the bulb is good,
no problem, you just replace the lighting module, another computer. Does the DMV allow the use of
paralel parking assist when taking a driver's license test? My dad's Lexus needed a battery. After replacement, the right passenger window wouldn't go up past half way, requiring a relearn procedure. P.O. said it happened to him once too, and dealer hooked up a scan tool and did the relearn and charged 97.00. I could rant all night long, and please know this is not intended to piss off any engineers that belong to this forum. I try to respect people of all walks of life and always keep in mind that there
are many with more education and intelligence than myself. My point is this, WHY? I used to work on cars
when they were still fun and challenging. But I never signed up for what's going on now. Progress
marches on I know, but I don't see the logic in some of this stuff, from an automotive perspective.
JMHO of course

[madmtnmotors]

Why is a microprocessor needed for nearly EVERY damn thing on an automobile? The buyer has no recourse, you buy a car, here's what you get no exceptions.
My point is this, WHY? I never signed up for what's going on now. Progress
marches on I know, but I don't see the logic in some of this stuff, from an automotive perspective.
JMHO of course

+1

I'll give you the ECM, or "Engine Control Module" to regulate the fuel injection, beyond that it's over complication that's not necessary.

"But it's what the buyers want"

Well, they never asked me...

[DH]

Why is a microprocessor needed for nearly EVERY damn thing on an automobile? The buyer has no recourse, you buy a car, here's what you get no exceptions.
My point is this, WHY? I never signed up for what's going on now. Progress
marches on I know, but I don't see the logic in some of this stuff, from an automotive perspective.
JMHO of course

+1

I'll give you the ECM, or "Engine Control Module" to regulate the fuel injection, beyond that it's over complication that's not necessary.

"But it's what the buyers want"

Well, they never asked me...

AMEN SIR!

[eigenvector]

FunJimmy said "Planed obsolescence is indeed an engineered reality. "

That comes back to the original point.  Sure, products are designed with an expected service life - but the comment was about deliberately designing to make the buyer pay more to replace it.  That would be idiocy and no one does it.  In 20 years I've never experienced that attitude.

My grumblings are about how the newer technology is failing just as quickly, yet infinitely more expensive to repair.  The engineers are chasing the "newer = better" mantra rather than coming up with something that truly is better - is less expensive to make, last as long or more, AND costs the same to replace.  They're just going with "It's cooler looking" or "Marketing is in love with this look"

[FunJimmy]

Why is a microprocessor needed for nearly EVERY damn thing on an automobile?

I don't see the logic in some of this stuff
JMHO of course

And that's why your a member of a 40 year old motorcycle fan club! 

[mrbreeze]

I could write a book about this stuff! After 20-25 years as an auto tech/ mechanic I've seen so many things that just make no sense. It slowly drove me away from the trade. I still love to work on stuff but to chase down and stay on top of technology has driven me to the point of madness.
Around 2009 I had been working at a shop that I really liked and was feeling like I was finally getting comfortable with but the shake up in the economy came crashing down and they went from an hourly pay set up to flat rate. This caused a great deal of stress because the shop wasn't set up for it. If I'm there for 8 hours a day and spend say 2 hours of that day pushing cars in and out of the bay to work on...that's 2 hours I don't get paid for unless I can magically book 8 hrs of work in 6 hours. Things like resetting a maintanence light don't seem like a big deal but they can be. Not all cars have a simple system so you have to go to Alldata or whatever and get the procedure sometimes spending 15 to 30 minutes doing something that you aren't getting paid for. Test driving a car takes time and you don't get paid for that either. How about in the 90's when Ford came out with those stupid as$ spring lock fuel filters. They weren't too bad if you bought the tool(s) to service them but Ford decided it was OK to put the fuel filter halfway behind the fuel tank on their trucks. They couldn't have moved the filter 6 inches forward so you could get the tool in there! Don't get me started on eliminating dip sticks or a Suburu with a 3 inch dip stick which has been camouflaged with wiring harnesses.
At least I was able to work on cars from the 70's on down that had a simpler technology and butt loads of horsepower.

[FunJimmy]

FunJimmy said "Planed obsolescence is indeed an engineered reality. "

That comes back to the original point.  Sure, products are designed with an expected service life - but the comment was about deliberately designing to make the buyer pay more to replace it.  That would be idiocy and no one does it.  In 20 years I've never experienced that attitude.

My grumblings are about how the newer technology is failing just as quickly, yet infinitely more expensive to repair.  The engineers are chasing the "newer = better" mantra rather than coming up with something that truly is better - is less expensive to make, last as long or more, AND costs the same to replace.  They're just going with "It's cooler looking" or "Marketing is in love with this look"

Consumer products have definitely gone in the wrong direction. The emphasis on imbedded technology for the sake of technology doesn't make sense to me. Do we really need every appliance to be internet enabled and connected. I get the frustration. Phone technology is way our of control too. Can't I just have my flip phone back?

[754]

Engineers make recommendations. Or specs.. The buyers then outsource to the vendors, and the beancounters. Put the screws to them to save mney where they can.
 Thus you can have the same part with different life expectancys.
 You get what you pay for
  Light bulbs for houses can last. 40 years. Fridges 50 years. Hondas 50 years.
 Look at a Yugo. And a Mercedes theyboth use master cylinders, but I bet the Yugo ones dont last as long..
  Look at Bosch or Makita grinders on sale at big tool houses.. Do yo think the parts are the same as the premium model..no..the lower line uses cheaper bearings, or bushings, cheaper gear, switches etc..

[754]

They can always be made better , but people dont want to pay for better they expect it for nothing.

[eigenvector]

Unfortunately they're paying more for something which basically does the same thing - it just looks cooler.

It's terrible that I say that - I actually like the idea of using LEDs over incandescent bulbs.  In theory they should last longer, should do everything they're supposed to do - but every time I see a 2010 Mercedes with a burned out tail light I have to wonder if they actually bothered to test them in the real world first or (and I don't want to admit this) - bought them from the cheapest supplier they could find and who cares if they performed to spec.

[FunJimmy]

Unfortunately they're paying more for something which basically does the same thing - it just looks cooler.

It's terrible that I say that - I actually like the idea of using LEDs over incandescent bulbs.  In theory they should last longer, should do everything they're supposed to do - but every time I see a 2010 Mercedes with a burned out tail light I have to wonder if they actually bothered to test them in the real world first or (and I don't want to admit this) - bought them from the cheapest supplier they could find and who cares if they performed to spec.

Bingo! Supply contracts are typically based on a tender process in which the lowest bidder gets the contract. That is certainly an issue in the construction industry. As a supplier of high performance commercial flooring I can't tell you how often I see permature failures due to shotty workmanship. Why? Lowest bidder get the contract and is often unqualified to actually perform the task of installing technical products.
In the end it's the manufacturer of the system that suffers a reputation of poor quality and not the installer etc.

[RAFster122s]

I worked in telecommunications for 17+ years, until the bubble brust of 2000 caught up with my program in 2003. I was part of the team that developed the messaging system that Verizon and AT&T wireless use. Lecent Technologies went from stock prices flirting with $100/share to less than $1/share and from over 90k employees worldwide to less than 34k when I was laid off in 03. I saw them unsuccessfully try to  partner with TaTa India's offshoring darling that took thousands of jobs in software and in service centers. They did not have the creativity by and large that most American software people I worked with had. That and passive agressive resistance to training them to replace us was what led to their failure. They then turned around and severed the Tata relationship to form one with Lucent Poland where instead of 3 -4 Indian engineers for the price of one Bell Labs software engineer they were then in a competitent engineers for about 1/3 to 1/2 the salary. They were successful with that push and later the program became a shell of its former self. Instead of 350 engineers doing leapfrog rapid development on cutting edge program they reduced the US group to be the front end requirements development and feature definition team while Poland developed and tested the product and the life was sucked out of everyone left. It was no longer a fun program to work on, those who survived tell me.

The TaTa experience showed that the engineers we dealt with largely were not as creative and innovative as the diverse group we had at Lucent.
They had a lead engineer for 4 to 6 junior engineers and it was readily apparent of the pecking order and the large disparity in their skill level.

I have worked with international projects for 20 years and worked with engineers from several countyies, so, I am not hating on one particular group...

Reality is that we no longer have a strong lead on other countries in so many areas as before. It is a hard thing to have your economy gutted by  bean counters/profit driven decisions to remove the infrastructure of your country rather than realize the bigger picture of those jobs and industries being important to maintain balance and long term sustainability.

So...there is no turning the clock back now. So, it is our new reality.
Tough to adjust to that I know.

Recently my nephew who is a computer enginineering grad from TN Tech Univ and I were talking about a mounting kit and wiring kit for a dual din car audio system I gave him at Christmas. He was looking for the kits and not finding them on a VA company I recommended. It was not something they had on their website that was apparent ghrough searches and we were talkingabout it and I told him to call them up...He like many other 20 something, they were used to finding it without someone helping and expecting to find it themselves. So, after having a conversation he realized the expectation of others of his generation to depend upon being able to find it themselves through phone or browser searches and not through interaction.
He found the parts after talking with the company.

So, while technology is doubling at an increased rate, Moores Law, it is a relationship which makes obsolescence be occurring faster than before. Thus, the need for constant retraining.  When I went to college for my undergrad over 35 years ago Moores Law for Technology doubling was at about 5 year pace. Today it is less than 2 years for certain areas...

The Star Trek episode where the young James Kirk rides a maglev motorcycle that is viewed as a dinosaur is a sample of our situation.
FI on bikes requires brains from some kind of electronics. So, restoring old bikes in the future will be with a technology that is viewed as ancient... Having experienced early Bosch Kjet and DJet as well as a couple versions of LambdaJet I saw the added sensors and complexity of the electronic systems. There were advantages of some things the advances allowed but, the maintenance and troubleshooting became more complex and false leads were more prevalent as well as the need to add more intelligence to try and have troubleshooting be simplified with a crude way to point to troubleshooting narrowing down the issues. It changed from a block that flashed codes with LEDs to a connector that had an electronic reader that used a standarized connector and software that sometime gave vague and sometimes contradictory codes. Only being more complex... So, commonsense still has to be used and a lot of shotgun replacement of parts which may still be functional and perfectly good components. They do it for expediency or they have a cookbook to do it so they have less skill needed or ability to replace parts urntil the correct part is found. Sometimes it merely further hides and delays the sympton which returns as the ecu is tuned to the faulty component and sometimes the relearning just delays the return of the original problem and then you return where the replace one or more additional parts.
I had a intermittent fault that the fuel pumps were replaced trying to fix it, and expensive repair at that time as it was over 500$ and that was a sizeable repair price at that time. It didn't fix the problem. I later found that themain ecu fuse off the battery/power distribution block as making intermittent break in the fuse just downstream of that block.
The intermittent fault reappeared less than a month later and I finally found the source the dealer could  not... I just wish I had kept the old fuel pumps... I bought that model car newer or older models of that same car and those parts were ocassionally needed.

[demon78]

Several comments to add, Raf122s you know a good "Parts Man" is a treasure, some one that knows where to go and how to find, that knows organically what substitution will work, but as the world turns they become more  expensive because of time in,(experience) knowledge, personal contacts and no one wants to pay them what they are worth, (bean counters!) so every one tries an automated  computer aided system and the system falls to a predetermined level that is really not that useful.
As far as the the electronics go they are not usually mature enough to handle the job and when they get there they are replaced with something newer that has more bells and whistles and the cycle starts over ( this maybe because of the overwhelming need to reinvent the wheel again, again, again, rather than do some thing useful )and if you think I'm crazy. I give you L.M.'s J.S.F. the F 35 and it's system of automated parts replacement, technology that's supposedly way cool but doesn't quite work right and will be in development for another decade.

[calj737]

There's nothing wrong with modern components. They're engineered quite well, regardless of the supplier. The issue tends to be the rigor of testing all the intricacies of dependencies, inter-operability, and functionality against the elements.

Microprocessors allow flexibility through programming. But its still down the programmer and test environment to determine its robustness. If companies weren't in such a rush to meet market demands for an ever-changing landscape of technical innovation, they'd likely be able to devote more time and variables into testing and insuring the long term success of their products.

All too often, I have found the mantra of "Hey, its software, we will simply revision it to address bugs..." prevails in the Engineering Management and Product Management office. This undermines customer satisfaction with the product delivered, but does address maintenance satisfaction. Too bad they (product vendors) don't place as much value or concern on a customer's time and frustration as we do on ours.

Like you Eigen, I have never seen a nefarious intent to develop an inferior product and deliver it to a market forcing customers to pay more, replace more frequently, or sacrifice reliability for profit. I discard those notions as consumer conspiracy.

[754]

 Its not nefarious...its more meeting a price point a lot of the time.
 I gave the example of the grinders, here is another.
 A. seventies Honda Four compared to Air cooled /6 Beemer... many of the Honda parts inferior to  the BMW. an example, a rebuildable fork, compared to the Honda design being simplified and now unbuildable... the cheap way out. replace vs repair.
 End result a 2300 dolar  bike vs a 4000 dollar bike.
 People ask me a lot , why not just build it better...answer price point.