My professor was himself horrified by that (but he was a teacher because he believed in not working for corporations so that was not very surprising)
I do know one company that has a reputation for not doing this. Miele in Europe but then their appliances are double to triple the price of typical companies.
EDIT: corrected Mean Time Between Failure instead of Mean Time Before Failure. Thanks slim
But today, when everything is made in Asia by people who earn orders of magnitude less than the people buying the products, that TV or washing machine is ~10% of a months salary, and you end up with "fixing it is more expensive than buying a new", because the labor costs of fixing stuff (locally) is orders of magnitudes larger than labor costs for manufacture (in Asia).
Corollary: if global salaries become more equal in the future, we will get quality long-lasting stuff again.
> the lowest wages will just move elsewhere.
Uhh.
Remember - a bad job has low wages. I high wage job can also be bad - to the economy.
My 2002 Volvo V70, which I bought second hand a couple of years ago, is so reliable that I consider buying a Volvo again.
Would you consider buying a NEW Volvo? If not, your purchase exerts little to no pressure on the only market which Volvo is concerned with, namely the market for new cars.
Yes, a reputation for reliability increases the demand for used Volvos thereby increasing the resale value which positively factors into the decision to purchase a new Volvo. However, the increase in "value" to the buyer of the new Volvo is so marginal that it is overwhelmed by any number of other factors involved in the final judgement of value in the decision to purchase a new car. A Volvo V70 of similar vintage to yours can be had for anywhere between $1,600 and $2,500 depending on condition according to my local Craigslist. If their reliability is so well regarded that a Volvo V70 is hypothetically worth 50% more than an equivalent Subaru wagon, resale premium afforded to the original buyer is just $1,250. That premium is so small that a manufacturer's sale incentive can wipe it out entirely, nevermind the fact that many of Volvo's competitors are less expensive by a far wider margin.
Basically, my point is that long term reliability doesn't really matter to manufacturer's beyond a certain point. As long as the vehicle meets the expectations of the original buyer and remains useful enough to keep the resale value out of the gutter (which doesn't appear to be the case with Volvos, at least in my area), the manufacturer has no incentive to further improve the reliability of their products.
For one, lease prices are partly determined by the expected resale value, and a lot of new car drivers get them by leasing them
Yes - sorry I forgot to add that bit :)
In my case, obsolescence is a problem to be addressed to attempt to support a long product lifecycle. In most companies, planned obsolescence is a tool to advance tech, decrease support and manufacturing costs over the long run, and increase profit.
This makes sense to me. If you want to engineer and support a long-lasting product, you have to own more of the supply chain, make more of your own component parts, or limit yourself to components that are "standard parts" and likely to remain available.
Historically, the company I work for has been a market leader in the niche they serve, and as such, their products were initially incredibly complex as they were first to market and invented a lot of the technology. Over time, those products have been simplified and cut down, with only the most important features kept (and a few "whiz-bang" features).
Interesting issue with this, though - while I completely agree with your suggestion, some of the pushback for taking that direction involves the perception that the inherent complexity of the products is a strategy in and of itself. If the product is simplified and streamlined then it is easier to copy and harder to protect, according to some who think that way.
Personally, the competition is going to be there if it really is that much simpler to make the same product with less components/features and easier to maintain. Patents, etc. protect a business' position to an extent but, ultimately, competition still often points the way to more efficiency that benefits everyone.
I think much like companies use "planned obsolescence" to try to control their market position, they also use "intentional complexity" to try to do so as well. Both strategies have their pros and cons.
I think really strong companies maintain market dominance with simply constructed, simply understood offerings, done well, at a fair market price, with the related mind-share branding that goes with it. But that definitely sounds a lot easier than it is in reality.
As the article describes, when replacing a part costs a comparable amount to the price of a brand-new appliance, people buy new appliances. With this mindset, the correct term is no longer "between" failures - when you might replace a part and average the described time until the next failure - but "before" failure - at which point you replace the device and buy a new one.
I think Miele serves as an excellent example for why the market has moved away from designing products with a 30+ year expected service life. If the average modern appliance lasts for 5-10 years as this article claims (and has proven true time and time again in my experience) but the reliable brand costs 2-3x more, you would have to be absolutely certain that the "reliable" product will actually last at least 20-30 years if you are to ever make up for the initial cost premium.
The problem is that even the most well built appliances will have random part failures and the chance of a failure happening (25-50% IME) over a span of 30 years is high enough that it has to be treated as an inevitability. Even if the parts are available that far in the future, the cost of having a technician diagnose the failure ensures the repair will cost at least $150 in labor alone and the average cost for any appliance repair with parts included is somewhere between $300 and $400 in my experience.
My point is that the "cheap and unreliable" appliance is almost always a financially sound choice even though it leads to a graveyard of dead appliances over time. The real problem is that graveyard of broken appliances we leave behind by making the financially sound decision to buy an appliance we know will only last ~10 years at best.
More renters = even less incentive for reliable products, as the cheapest install that works is sufficient to rent.
I really don't see how home ownership is a factor here at all. This is just a symptom of modern society where people don't expect things to last and don't penalize mfgrs who sell them short-lived junk, and instead look for generally the cheapest stuff.
This seems like the most important detail by far.
