Things don’t always work like they should and that compromises safety

Yes, this is what I have come to believe.  Things just don’t work like they should and because of this we are at ever increasing levels of risk.  Yet, we seem to be much more tolerant today of early breakdown and seem unaware of the associated side effects that occur.  Society today seems to shrug off the fact that many things we purchase just don’t work as intended.  I am not quite sure why.

Some who study these things have put this tolerance on the lower cost for many durable goods as a percentage of expendable income.  The idea is that since the initial cost is so cheap it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work right, you just buy a new one.  This concept, in some circles, is called the Walmart Effect.  The concept is born from the continual pressure that Walmart exerts on its suppliers to continually reduce the cost of items it buys with each contract cycle.  Suppliers, knowing that without a price reduction they could very possibly lose Walmart as a customer, instead redesign their products.  They do so with parts and materials they know will lead to less reliability but also yield a lower price.  When price is the dominant deal maker quality and reliability take a back seat.  After all what good is a high quality reliable product that does not have a sales channel. With Walmart leading the way most other retailers fall right in line to maintain their competitive position in the marketplace.  As consumers we have shown that this concept works.  We demand lower prices and reward those that give them.  So the situation becomes, if a toaster breaks no problem just buy another one.  But if the way that toaster breaks causes a fire then that is a problem.  But we seem willing to take the risk.

Another reason that has been postulated for our tolerance of early breakdown is that many product lifespans have been shortened by the continual march of technological innovation.  Just look at our cell phones.  No one expects a smart phone to last more than a year or so anymore.  Why carry around a dinosaur when the new ones can do so much more.  Cell phone companies have set pricing strategies to encourage this constant upgrade.  You don’t have to put down $750 to $1000 every year to 18 months to get that new phone.  Instead the cost is spread over the life of a contract so it feels relatively painless to keep getting the newest and best.  When after upgrading your software to IOS 8.1 as recommended by the vendor your Iphone 5 refuses to get email or send messages without a reboot then it becomes annoying.  When Apple essentially shrugs its shoulders at the problem, admits that this seems to be happening to a lot of people and suggests the solution is to buy a new iPhone 6, then it becomes a problem.

This renting or leasing instead of buying approach extends to automobiles as well.  Leasing has lower the cost of entry to getting a new car quite significantly.  In 2014 more that 1 in 4 new cars were purchased through a lease program, with the average lease being 3 years. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am one of the 25%.  I like the feeling of driving a late model car that has not had the chance to have major components degrade to a point that makes it somewhat unsafe to drive or lead to costly repairs.  However, due to a totally unscientific non-random sample of acquaintances who have had issues with their new automobiles I am starting to re-evaluate my automobile leasing strategy. There seems to be a rash of  problems and annoyances that come with the newest models of cars on the market today.  I speculate that the root cause of these issues is the rush to innovate and bring the latest technology to the marketplace that has been adopted by the automobile industry.  This has not always been the case and I think this new automotive design approach is a double edged sword.  It gets buyers looking for something new and that drives sales but it also causes some hiccups in bringing the newer technology to market.

I have some direct experience with the automotive design philosophy.  It is somewhat dated but I think a brief description will help prove a point. ” Back in the day”, as the saying goes, I worked as the Intellectual Property Manager for the Microelectronics Business Unit of Lucent Technologies.  Lucent was a member of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, NCMS.  NCMS is a member based consortium that encourages collaborative innovation at the R&D level. One such collaboration was to try to get an integrated circuit manufacturer and a printed wiring board maker together with an automobile producer.  My job was to assess whether Lucent would benefit as a member of such a research consortium.   The consortium’s objective would be to try to get new technology into American made cars faster.  It seems that the Japanese car makers were taking a wide lead in new technology adoption, buyers were noticing and correspondingly were the Japanese car makers were gaining market share.

Introductory meetings were held at each of the facilities that might become involved.  It was soon learned that the pace of technology adoption was vastly different at the three companies.  The integrated circuit manufacturer talked about life spans of its products from design to discontinued availability of no more that 5 years.  The printed circuit maker talked about the continuing evolution of flex circuitry and multi-layer board technology that caused customers to continually redefine their modules into ever smaller footprints.  They also indicated that lifespans of their  products were getting shorter and shorter with each manufacturing technological evolution.  When we got to the automobile manufacturer we were quite surprised with what we heard.  The auto guys talked about design cycles of 5 years or more between inception and the introduction into the next model and then product availability for ten years after.  They said, a car has to run for 10 years while undergoing extremes in temperature, humidity and enduring things such as jarring from driving into potholes.  So getting it right took time and testing.  They were correct, of course, to worry about getting it right the first time.   But for the Integrated Circuit manufacturer that kind of design in cycle was way beyond anything they were willing to support. The printed board maker was not so keen about the harsh environments their products would be in.   So although the companies tried to make it work it was decided after some time that this type of consortia was not right for the times and was abandoned.  This was the era of getting the cars initial quality to be perfect and the reliability to be robust.  The car makers thought they needed to have the time to get the right.

Today, the cars available to buy are loaded with the latest technology.  Car makers are rushing technology into redesigned or new car models at an ever faster clip.  Design cycles are months not years.  If a car doesn’t have the latest digital interface of some sort it isn’t worth buying, at least not new. We demand blue tooth, GPS, internet radio, rear cameras, side and front collision sensors and many many other things unheard of a few years ago.  Believe me, I think this is all great stuff but it comes at a cost.  As I said earlier, I have conducted an unscientific sample of people in my extended family who have obtained a new car in the last year and have found the following troubling things.

Three out of four folks who obtained a new vehicle in the last six months have had some significant problems.  One of them purchased an SUV with the digital environmental control and communication package.  She spends a lot of time in her car and frequently needs to communicate with clients.  For her hands free blue tooth capability is a necessity.  Not long after getting her car the blue tooth connectivity was lost for one of the two phones used in the car.  Losing this capability becomes a potential safety problem as the clients call and the desire not to miss a call might lead to a decision to take a call in an unsafe manner.  In returning the car to the dealer she was told that there was a software update for that problem.  The fact that she was not notified of the fix is a customer service issue that should also be addressed.  My guess is that since this issue didn’t rise to the level of a recall, notification was not deemed necessary. But you have to wonder how many people are driving around using their phones in an unsafe manner because they don’t know there is a fix for the problem.

Another family member also has the latest and greatest electronic package in another brand of SUV.  At the end of a long drive  the car was shut off as always and everything looked normal except that this time the display screen decided to stay on.  Overnight the battery was drained and the car had to be towed to a dealer the next day.  A new system has been ordered to replace the defective one.  This is not exactly a safety problem but it is definitely an example of things not working as they are supposed to.

A third family member also purchased an SUV with the complete electronic package.  The problem here is that the complete package is so complicated to run that your attention to driving is  compromised.  Even the simplistic task of changing a radio station can require the driver taking his eyes off the road for much too long.  There were two of us in the car, me as the passenger.  We both consider ourselves somewhat tech savvy.  I found myself saying several times keep you eyes on the road while I figure this out. I noticed that I was  spending much more time than any driver could ever afford to accomplish tasks like switching from radio mode to climate control mode and just forget about trying to get an address into the GPS.  All this complexity is a safety issue of increasing magnitude.

What is also happening is that initial vehicle quality is starting to suffer.  My sample is an indicator of what the industry watch dog has also found.  J.D. Power’s study of Initial Quality for 2014 is showing an uptick in problems.  The study attributes this increase in problems to the fact that new, more sophisticated technologies have been introduced in several newly launched models (i.e. those that are completely new to the market or have undergone major redesigns).   I am old enough to remember going with my father to pick up our first new car.  The dealer proudly saying something like “don’t worry just take her home and make a list of the things we need to correct and we will take care of them without fail”.  And yes we went home developed a list of about 20 things, some very serious safety issues and some cosmetic but a long list never the less.

I suggest that we need to strike a new balance between new technology introduction and our ability to absorb it, both from a manufacturing and a use point of view.  I am not sure what the answer might be.  But I know we need to make sure we do better that our most recent experience indicates if we are going to continue making driving safer than ever.