Author Topic: Have you designed early life failure into a product?  (Read 30817 times)

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Offline hamdi.tn

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #25 on: August 07, 2014, 09:52:13 pm »
Crucial subject and i think it concern not only EE but every discipline that involve both Engineers and decision makers and it kind of remind my boss. The quality of a particular design now is defined by a commercial challenge to keep cost as low as possible, even if it doesn't mean that those product are cheap, just astronomic profits for the company. Most of the time engineer, forced to keep there jobs, accept to give some rubbish design just to satisfy the boss greed.
I remember when Dave talked about PICKIT3 and how crap it is and some wireless energy harvesting device totally useless and both driven by a commercial consideration not technical consideration.
I still enjoy the vintage video, like everyone in this blog i think, just because it remind me that designing was the job of defeating engineering challenge and give the customer some robust, reliable piece of hardware that last for ever , i had a German tv that run for 25 years everyday no problem at all.
An other thing i think is the nature of the market it self, costumer now are hungry for technology and new gadget that came up everyday so there no need any more for a product that last more then 5 years, the user will not use his device for more than that anyway.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #26 on: August 07, 2014, 10:17:13 pm »
I remember when Dave talked about PICKIT3 and how crap it is ...

I loved Microchips response:
 

Offline zapta

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #27 on: August 07, 2014, 10:38:39 pm »
I loved Microchips response:


Well done damage control.  Humility on one hand, promoting the new product on the other, and a surprise ending when they reveal the first name of Mr. Head. Somebody at Marketing should get a bonus.
 

Online wraper

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #28 on: August 07, 2014, 10:50:19 pm »
I was the victim of that, once.  I bought a 24-channel rack-mount audio interface with a PCI interface card.  The drivers had a hard-coded failure date in them.
Bomb dates are NOT COOL, ever, but especially if you don't know they're there.
Ulikely that was intentional. Similar thing with Crucial M4 SSD
http://www.storagereview.com/crucial_m4_0309_firmware_update_for_5200_hour_bug_released
100% of that model SSD were affected.
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #29 on: August 07, 2014, 10:55:22 pm »

But since this was just ten years ago I wouldn't dismiss that the involved engineers just gave a flying fart through a rolling doughnut. The attitude about safety or work ethics in general has massively changed among young engineers.
Sadly, I have to agree. I have to say too many times to the collegues other people working in the same building: That is not according to IPC-610 (Acceptability of Electronic Assemblies). Most response I usually hear makes me lose all hope in humanity.
 

Offline hamdi.tn

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #30 on: August 07, 2014, 11:21:24 pm »
Can't blame young engineer for that ( am young  :P ) my boss was a professor in an engineering school and the only thing he care about MONEY, to hell engineering. He ordered the production of 100 unit of equipment we produce that time ( energy saving equipment ) for a total cost of around 100.000$ the product still under-test and showing major dysfunction, ignoring my advice and production manager advice and sell the thing anyway... every one of them returned as defective in 2 month  :-//
and that's how he teach engineering  :palm:
 

Offline hamdi.tn

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #31 on: August 07, 2014, 11:29:11 pm »
Most response I usually hear makes me lose all hope in humanity.

still, i have to agree with that, when i ask young engineer or engineering student why they choose to be EE, i lose all hope in humanity indeed  :palm: ... most common answer " to make money more than anyone else " ... and they get big disappointment once they finish school as much as they are a big disappointment to the industry :-DD
 

Offline Tinkerer

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #32 on: August 07, 2014, 11:50:42 pm »
Can't blame young engineer for that ( am young  :P ) my boss was a professor in an engineering school and the only thing he care about MONEY, to hell engineering. He ordered the production of 100 unit of equipment we produce that time ( energy saving equipment ) for a total cost of around 100.000$ the product still under-test and showing major dysfunction, ignoring my advice and production manager advice and sell the thing anyway... every one of them returned as defective in 2 month  :-//
and that's how he teach engineering  :palm:
At the company I work at I am sometimes amazed at what makes it out the door. One new product, 18 months behind schedual and it was hell trying to get the thing to work and they are rushing to sell it when in reality the thing should probably still have been in the prototype stage. Another product basically had a major fault that is only now getting addressed, this is something like a couple years after it was first created; I suppose they should be lucky they havent sold very many. Obviously alot of stuff that is sold does actually work but its just in some things nothing goes right.

Heres an example for ya. Friend has a garage door that wouldnt open. The cause? Well the one piece that should have been made of tough material was instead one of those cheap white plastic gears. The teeth all stripped away. Aside from that, worked perfectly.

Another example I have seen in a crt monitor was an electrolytic cap placed practically right next to one of the power resistors. These resistors had become hot enough to discolor the board and one of them(it wasnt as close to the cap as the other but having 3 hot resistors close to each other certainly didnt help with heat disappation) had even baked most of the writing off itself from continued heating. This cap was connected directly to one of the control chips. Here is the kicker, just a couple inches away was perfectly good board space that could have been used as the location for this cap, it wouldnt have interfered with traces or anything to have moved it over a few inches; had someone decided to during the design phase, moving that cap could have been considered a minor change.


Quote
still, i have to agree with that, when i ask young engineer or engineering student why they choose to be EE, i lose all hope in humanity indeed  :palm: ... most common answer " to make money more than anyone else " ... and they get big disappointment once they finish school as much as they are a big disappointment to the industry :-DD
Who in the world is that? You dont go into engineering to make lots of money.(even though you will likely live comfortably) If I had wanted to make money, I would have gone into politics or something like banking/wallstreet.
 

Offline SirNick

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #33 on: August 08, 2014, 12:07:13 am »
I was the victim of that, once.
Ulikely that was intentional. Similar thing with Crucial M4 SSD

I have wondered, because I don't know what they could possibly stand to gain.  (Drivers are a free download, there's no subscription model or anything.)  But, what reason does a kernel driver have to know the date and time?  Puzzling.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #34 on: August 08, 2014, 04:33:42 am »
I suspect the same thing happened with aluminum electrolytic capacitors in power supplies.  When they had poorly specified ripple current ratings, large safety factors were used but as those specifications got better, they were not derated as much and operating life was more accurately bounded.

The above may be a justification for over specifying a PC power supply or planning on replacing the capacitors.  I am getting annoyed by how many "high quality" PC power supplies fail just out of warranty because of capacitor failure.
I think the main problem is the "smart" fan controller they put into many PSUs nowadays, marketing it as a feature. And then there's active PFC, which actually is useful in commercial settings, but in residential, it's just an extra cost and extra point of failure. I once opened up a broken laptop PSU and found out that it failed because the PFC stage failed. Swap that out for a plain voltage doubler and it works just fine, albeit without universal input capability.
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Offline aargeeTopic starter

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #35 on: August 08, 2014, 06:35:27 am »
Well and then there's this:

Engineers' Creed

As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare.

I pledge:

To give the utmost of performance;
To participate in none but honest enterprise;
To live and work according to the laws of man and the highest standards of professional conduct;
To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.
In humility and with need for Divine Guidance, I make this pledge.

Adopted by National Society of Professional Engineers, June 1954

- See more at: http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics/engineers-creed#sthash.fQvUZCa0.dpuf


Even though this is an US site, most Engineering bodies around the world something similar as a creed. It is still quoted and still current.

Which puts an interesting slant on all those who rant and rave about who is entitled to use the title of Engineer - or not. It essentially says to be an Engineer you must firstly stand by the morals/ethics of the profession over the $$$.

As an engineer in today's world our response would be "For God's sake man would you have us starve to death?"
Really? Should we walk away from dodgy design implementations?
Not easy, not hard, just need to be incentivised.
 

Offline hamdi.tn

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #36 on: August 08, 2014, 06:43:40 am »
Who in the world is that? You dont go into engineering to make lots of money.(even though you will likely live comfortably) If I had wanted to make money, I would have gone into politics or something like banking/wallstreet.

well, where am from (Tunisia) the best salaries go for Doctors, lawyers then engineers. So basically if you are an engineer you have a chance of getting a good salary compared to most people in industry, around 750 USD for graduated engineer/ 1k$ to 1.5k$ for senior / and this go up to 2.5k$ for manager) while  everyone else in the industry earn between 250$ and  450$.

Politics here are not profitable ( in a legal way ) unless you are the president and get 20.000$ / month  .. bastard :P , anyway I don't think i can consider politics a "job" anywhere in the world.
 

Offline hamdi.tn

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #37 on: August 08, 2014, 06:54:49 am »
To participate in none but honest enterprise;
honest enterprise ... really...  :-DD
 

Offline wagon

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #38 on: August 08, 2014, 08:51:05 am »
Another example I have seen in a crt monitor was an electrolytic cap placed practically right next to one of the power resistors. These resistors had become hot enough to discolor the board and one of them(it wasnt as close to the cap as the other but having 3 hot resistors close to each other certainly didnt help with heat disappation) had even baked most of the writing off itself from continued heating. This cap was connected directly to one of the control chips. Here is the kicker, just a couple inches away was perfectly good board space that could have been used as the location for this cap, it wouldnt have interfered with traces or anything to have moved it over a few inches; had someone decided to during the design phase, moving that cap could have been considered a minor change.
A common (here in Australia) fire alarm 24V power supply / charger has a similar problem.  They put a little (100nF??) polyester cap next to a 5W resistor that runs hot all of the time.  The little cap doesn't respond well to this, eventually  failing and causing the regulator to not regulate anymore.  A shame, since the design is quite nice otherwise : it has a conventional transformer with a switchmode regulator (so 40V in, ~24vDC out).    I relocate the cap on longer legs so it lasts longer.
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Offline dannyf

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #39 on: August 08, 2014, 10:49:54 am »
Quote
to make money more than anyone else

You should be thankful of that - without it, we would still be living in caves.

================================
https://dannyelectronics.wordpress.com/
 

Offline cimmo

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #40 on: August 08, 2014, 01:05:45 pm »
Quote
to make money more than anyone else

You should be thankful of that - without it, we would still be living in caves.
Why do you have to ruin interesting threads by throwing in your political opinions all the time?
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Offline mzzj

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #41 on: August 08, 2014, 02:29:19 pm »


When lightbulbs were used, it costed a little more to make them fail. Controlling the impurity of the inert gas costed something, when putting in pure inert gas would make the bulbs last much longer. In Edison museum there are lamps about 100 years old, shining 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This same myth keeps running around. Guess what is the effiency of those ancient edison bulbs??
Advanced quiz: guess what is the optimium lifetime of lets say 100 W incandescent bulb considering typical bulb purchase price, effiency and electricity bill?
 

Offline zapta

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #42 on: August 08, 2014, 03:15:06 pm »
Which puts an interesting slant on all those who rant and rave about who is entitled to use the title of Engineer - or not. It essentially says to be an Engineer you must firstly stand by the morals/ethics of the profession over the $$$.

We should develop a similar creed for electronic parts distributors. This way we will get free parts from Digikey.
 

Offline SirNick

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #43 on: August 08, 2014, 06:57:40 pm »
Nothing is that polarized in reality.

Obviously a company needs to make a profit, or else there are no products.  But there's enormous pressure from the customer to make it better faster cheaper, with opposing pressure from the employees for better pay, more tools, etc.  At the same time, margins are getting cut from retailers as the consumer has more ability to compare prices from ANY source world-wide instead of just the authorized dealer in their home town.  As such, retailers want steep discounts for large orders, or whatever they can get to set them apart.  Of course, consumers are also being trained that they can and should return the product for any reason whatsoever -- including insufficient pre-sales research, or whim, or buyer's remorse, or finding a cheaper price elsewhere.

So, yeah there's good old fashioned greed involved, sure.  But there's also the monster of our own making:  "Why isn't anything built to last anymore?  Also, I can get this $15 cheaper from Amazon, and $30 cheaper from a no-name source on eBay."

OTOH, we're willing to pay ridiculous prices to see a movie or watch a basketball game...
 

Offline wagon

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #44 on: August 08, 2014, 11:34:02 pm »
Nothing is that polarized in reality.

Obviously a company needs to make a profit, or else there are no products.  But there's enormous pressure from the customer to make it better faster cheaper, with opposing pressure from the employees for better pay, more tools, etc.  At the same time, margins are getting cut from retailers as the consumer has more ability to compare prices from ANY source world-wide instead of just the authorized dealer in their home town.  As such, retailers want steep discounts for large orders, or whatever they can get to set them apart.  Of course, consumers are also being trained that they can and should return the product for any reason whatsoever -- including insufficient pre-sales research, or whim, or buyer's remorse, or finding a cheaper price elsewhere.

So, yeah there's good old fashioned greed involved, sure.  But there's also the monster of our own making:  "Why isn't anything built to last anymore?  Also, I can get this $15 cheaper from Amazon, and $30 cheaper from a no-name source on eBay."

OTOH, we're willing to pay ridiculous prices to see a movie or watch a basketball game...

Well said....
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Offline saturation

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #45 on: August 09, 2014, 02:40:56 pm »
Most reputable makers can design obsolescence rather than failure and there is full disclosure to the buyer, such as a consumable part that has no replacement, e.g. batteries, chemical sensors.   

In the USA, putting a purposed defect into devices would give the brand a bad name as the failure could occur anytime,  it would make a warranty impossible,  most distributors who warrant a device for 1-2 weeks after a sale would probably not sell it, and if consumers are misled it could lead to a class action lawsuit or even a criminal liability through the attorney general.

Best Wishes,

 Saturation
 

Offline wagon

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #46 on: August 11, 2014, 10:51:44 am »
The upside is you can choose to keep that good stuff until it's worn out, many years later if you so desire.
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Offline con-f-use

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #47 on: August 11, 2014, 01:19:17 pm »
Japanese manufacturers have a different way of keeping the sales coming. They build high quality products that last, but every year release new models with new features that make people want to upgrade. You often see people discarding perfectly good, fully working electronics, often in the original box in Japan. A new one with a new widget came out so they replaced it.

Japanese shops are set up for low margins but high volume too. They will stick not just every model of computer mouse or washing machine, but every available colour too. They keep them in stock so you can get instant gratification. Somehow they managed to make a €300 rice cooker an impulse purchase.
And look how Japanese economy is doing.

Of course your statement is not the reason why Japan is struggling. I agree that new features and constant improvement is the best way to ensure sales, but Japanese stores might not be the best example.
 

Offline SirNick

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #48 on: August 11, 2014, 10:57:35 pm »
Japanese manufacturers have a different way of keeping the sales coming. They build high quality products that last, but every year release new models with new features that make people want to upgrade. You often see people discarding perfectly good, fully working electronics, often in the original box in Japan. A new one with a new widget came out so they replaced it.

Interestingly, we're seeing consumer acceptance cycles shorten to the point that even today's built-to-a-price products are out-living their value.  The mobile phone market is especially interesting:

On one hand, I have an iPhone 4.  Pretty respectable hardware, but after installing iOS 7, it feels unacceptably clunky.  Is the added weight of the new OS a justified trade-off for whatever it's doing that iOS 6 wasn't?  (IMO, no -- I would gladly go back.)  Is it just laziness?  (CPU power to burn, so why optimize?)  Or is it merely a shrewd tactic to sell newer phones?  It seems kinda sad that even new, fast hardware is burning more battery power than it might ought to.

Then on the other hand, you have Amazon's new Fire Phone.  Spec-wise, it's a solid offering.  But the Internet's collective impression:  "Meh.  Nothing new."  I don't even think the public knows what it was hoping for, they're just not impressed.  I think it's because we've reached a saturation point where there isn't much room to improve the hardware anymore -- at least not every year.  Not that they aren't trying to fake it.  LG just released a new phone with "4x HD resolution"... 2560x1440 in a 5.5" display.  The DPI is starting to creep into the realm of print media.  Does that really do any good?  Flogging a horse, IMO.  But, I guess we can't have consumers using the same phone for four years.  No sir.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: Have you designed early life failure into a product?
« Reply #49 on: August 11, 2014, 11:20:49 pm »
Interestingly, we're seeing consumer acceptance cycles shorten to the point that even today's built-to-a-price products are out-living their value.  The mobile phone market is especially interesting:

...

But, I guess we can't have consumers using the same phone for four years.  No sir.
I'm happy with my Blackberry 9900. Only 3 years old but it doesn't have a single scratch and works as well and as fast as day one. But I don't use my phone to play games :)

Then again, see what not having obsolescence is doing to RIM.
 
 


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