The story of how Osram, Philips and General Electric got along, in terms of limiting the lifespan of the bulbs they produced, is probably familiar to everyone. The creation of the light bulb cartel is pointed to as a prelude to a whole history of deliberate aging of products by manufacturers. Pathologies in this aspect happen all the time, but for me this is the beginning of another story as well. The story of how the industry has moved forward in terms of quality, repeatability and precision in industrial production.
Incandescent bulbs are a great example, as almost everyone has experienced a situation where their car’s headlight bulbs burned out barely hours or days apart. That’s why replacing the bulbs one by one doesn’t make much sense; we’ll be replacing the second of the pair in a while anyway. And this is a real masterstroke, to produce something with such great precision and repeatability that the service life of individual components can be determined with high accuracy and prepare to replace specific components before they even fail.
For some, this will be a conscious aging of products, while for others it will be an indicator of quality, so that properly serviced aircraft, machinery or cars can be nearly trouble-free, thanks to clearly defined resourses and service procedures.
I believe that in the 21st century, it is not the issue of aging products that is the problem, but the consumer himself. Manufacturers are meeting our expectations, and the saying that of the three attributes – cheap, fast and good, only two can occur at once – is more apt than ever. We want to buy cheap, nice things, so those are offered to us. At the same time, we forget that any equipment we own is operated more intensively than 20-30 years ago. The washing machine and dishwasher go on day in and day out, our phone screen lights up 8h a day, the laptop at work similarly. The quality of the products, thanks to industrialization, is higher than ever, but when set against a low price, it can’t keep up with durability.
In 2015, I had the pleasure of completing the purchase of 4 identical two-way excavators with virtually consecutive serial numbers. The beginning of their operation has shown, as expected, that the weakest link in the process is always man. Simple failures due to under-tightened screws, seals damaged during installation, simple electrical faults. These are typical problems of new construction machines, which are most often assembled by hand and testing of finished products is, for logistical reasons, limited to the simplest “dry” tests. Things started to get interesting after about 2,000-3,000 motor hours, when it became clear that individual machine components fail at very similar mileage. Cracking rigid hydraulic lines, valve and actuator seals, cabin blowers, air conditioning lines, solenoid valves, parking heaters, etc. a complete list would include a good few dozen items with components that will certainly refuse to cooperate in the foreseeable future.
We quickly learned to assess individual failures, and began ordering more and more components for the shelf. This course of action significantly reduces machine repair time and often eliminates downtime altogether. It also offers the opportunity to save significant money by having more time to counteract the bad practices of construction machinery manufacturers.
Modern construction machinery has relatively few unique parts in its design that are not found on the open market. Which doesn’t stop the manufacturer at all, branding them with its logo, giving them their own numbers and selling them at a price several times higher than the market price. At a time when quick troubleshooting and getting the equipment back up and running is crucial, there is no time to play around, we have to call a service center and overpay. But when we are able to assess the possibility of failure again, we can calmly take the time to find the component we are interested in on the open market and secure it for our inventory. Often machine manufacturers don’t even bother to blur the markings and simply deliberately sell us parts at a 300% markup. I know, of course, what the free market is all about and how it works, but some extremes can disturb the heartbeat when paying invoices.
The conclusion is that the unification of equipment in the company, incredibly facilitates the operation and service, especially of construction machinery and tools. And the industrialization of the 21st century has given us previously unattainable quality and the ability to anticipate events. While many will say that “today’s equipment is not as durable as it used to be,” I will say that it is, above all, faster and more efficient, and you have to start equating durability with quality of service.