quote:
Originally posted by Ugly3:
Every company that wants to be in business 10 years from now is trying to find a way to reduce the cost of their products every day. You can bet the farm that Purolator has a team of engineers working on cost reductions right now. So does Delco, so does GE, so does everyone.
One of the most valuable "assets" any company has in their reputation in the marketplace. In my experience, more time and money is spent testing cost reduction suggestions for product quality and longevity than is spent coming up with the idea in the first place.
One person sees a product with 4 spotwelds in place of the old 5 spotwelds and figures the product has been cheapened and is functionally suspect.
Another person remarks, gee I have been buying this product that has met my needs for 5 years and the price has not gone up, the company is really doing a great job for me.
Do all implemented cost reductions work out "properly", not a chance. Did the company intentially put an inferrior product in the marketplace, I doubt it.
Murphy lives!
I partially agree with what you say here, but I've seen something more disheartening over the last several years. And I believe a lot of what I have seen is due to $.35/hour developing world labor costs along with short sightedness of today's managers/leaders in corporations.
It seems like everything we learned in the past 50+ years to improve quality and lower costs is being thrown out the window as corporations that stay in this country, try to compete with the above mentioned labor rates, lack of labor laws, non-existent pollution standards, and a consumer in the developing world who doesn't expect the same level of quality we do. What ends up happening is stupid decisions are made to cut short term costs which really ends up hurting quality and then eventually end up being less efficient cost wise. The saying "penny wise and pound foolish" comes to mind here. All this is covered up with huge marketing budgets that try to convince the unsuspecting younger consumers that all is great.
No problem for the leaders/managers as by then they will have gotten all their big bonuses for their actions, the plant will close and move overseas, and then not only will production workers be out of a job, but many white collar workers, including engineers. This is really sick behavior. It's like foregoing the cost of a life preserving medicine, so you can enjoy life more with the cash you saved, only you're dead in a few years.
Today, it seems like my fellow engineers and I have to battle management on a daily basis on their stupid cost cutting ideas. We continually try to show them how we can improve quality, lower costs, AND, make an engineers life less miserable, but it seems more and more it just falls on deaf ears as they crank up their propaganda machine for upper level management with lip service versions of six-sigma and the like.
Here's an example of what we see in terms of quality today. You can now go out and buy a 27" color TV for $200. That same size color TV would of cost you $500 12 years ago. Wow, you think, look how they improved the efficiency in how they produce that product. But if you look a little deeper you discover a few unpleasant side effects. Today's TV will have a 90 day warranty, 1 year on the tube and will have a substantially higher OOTB return rate and lower MTBF and a crappier distorted picture. The TV from 12 years ago had a 3 year warranty, 5 years on the tube, nice distortion free picture, a low OOTB return rate and higher MTBF and is probably still working if you have one.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
:Just a warning to the newbies and a reminder to the oldies, the PF35L's you're seeing/buying may be the "bogus" variety that Delco is foisting off on an unsuspecting public. I did some fact-finding last year after Chris Chow noticed that the PF35L's I forwarded to him (from Dal at Lambert Buick) didn't match the one he already had. The new filters were much lighter and generally less sturdy appearing, and didn't have the readily visible spot welds on the top.
