James L Adams—People and Products

Good Products Last—Oldies but Goodies

The  photo at the left shows two tools that not only do their job beautifully, but are inexpensive and have been around as least as long as I can remember.  The red jack on the wheel of the tractor is a Hi-Lift jack.  It has a tested load of 7,000 pounds, and can lift a load to a height of over three feet.  It can also pull and clamp.  It is extremely simple to operate—kick a lever up and it raises the load, kick it down and it allows you to lower it. 

It is sometimes called a farmer’s jack, since it rapidly does its job , absorbs tremendous punishment without breaking, and has enough capacity and stroke to handle most farm jobs.  I am not a farmer, but I use mine constantly to do household maintenance, work on cars, and pursue my old machinery hobby.  Incidentally, these jacks are manufactured by a number of different companies, but I have had the best luck with those made by Hi-Lift, a company that was started in 1905 and seems to be as dependable as its jacks.

 The silver colored object on the ground is a come-along, called by many other names, since it is widely manufactured. It is a compact cable hoist that is capable of exerting large force for its size and weight.  The one shown is rated at 2 tons and inexpensive.  Of course, it would be easy to get one with more capacity (maybe a four ton one would outpull a Hi-Lift), but although I often need to lift heavy weights, I seldom need to pull that hard.  My 2 ton one will pull any vehicle I own and lift any thing I need to.

  But the real miracle can be seen from the more close up shot on the right of the come-along hanging on the Hi-Lift.  No electric wires, batteries, leaking hydraulic fluid, failing seals, or hidden complicated mechanisms.  I love them for that alone.  They are all hanging out there allowing one to see how they work, and fix if they misbehave.  In particular the Hi-Lift seems to be almost fail-proof, and should something break, replacement parts are easy to get and simple to install. And I must admit, I do like kicking a lever better than pushing a button—especially if I am the middle of a frustrating job.

Product Quality and Capitalism

 In the New York Times Digest last Monday, there were three articles together on the business page that caught my attention.  The first was entitled "G.M. Disconnect between Managers and Engineering". The original article as it appeared in the newspaper is here.  It is concerned with defects that are detected in products at the engineering level and either do not get to the level of the organization that can solve the problem, or do so and are not dealt with, usually either for reasons of time or money.  This is neither new nor newsworthy, but probably we need to be reminded of it once in a while.  Engineers want products to be as perfect as possible.  At “higher” levels of the organization, schedules and profit loom large.  If people are killed (the ignition switch mess at GM, the Challenger explosion), or if the product is highly visible and potentially dangerous (the Three Mile Island shutdown), the media grabs hold of it and the impact is large.  This is especially true if it is found that management knew of the problem before.  It is not likely that product defects can ever be completely banished.  But managers should perhaps be more aware that eventually,  the cause of such things will be discovered, and the cost to the company will be far larger than if they were solved when discovered.   Unfortunately, the punishments at higher levels often seem to be proportionally less than those at the working level.

 The second article, entitled "Japan Seeks to Squelch its Popular Tiny Cars", available here,  concerns effort in the Japanese government to inhibit the production and ownership of keis, small cars that are particularly appropriate to the crowded road conditions,  high fuel prices, and relatively small trip lengths of Japan.  The government is apparently concerned that these very popular vehicles (40% of new cars sold in Japan last year were keis) are distracting the Japanese automobile industry from  more profitable larger cars.  The Japanese people, who have become used to the convenience and low cost of these small cars are rightfully annoyed.

 The third article is "Music for Nothing, at Least While it Lasts" (here).  It focuses upon the increasing amout of services and entertainment available over the internet and television either free or for very low cost (not counting the monthly payment to internet service and TV providers and the time spent blotting out advertisements and junk).  The concern is that this “boon” will be at the cost of the quality of the material.  It has an interesting and revealing comment from the musician Van Dykes Parks that appeared in The Daily Beast concerning a song he recently wrote with Ringo Starr.  He stated that in the good old days, the song would have provided him “with a house and a pool”, but at current royalty rates he and the former Beatle would make less than $80.  I must admit that I would like to finish a couple of books that I think could make a lot of people think about such things as creativity vs. control, innovation vs. tradition, and quality vs. profit, but probably won’t in the present scene of information overload and the need to market one’s own work.  Writing books is hard work and requires a lot of time.  I am not looking to spend even more time publicizing them through endless hours on the internet and doing book tours, especially since the book-reading population is decreasing.

 These three articles caused me to continue to wonder about the effects of unbridled capitalism on the quality of products.  Obviously high quality products should not injure or kill people.  G.M.’s safety problems are being blamed on its “cost culture”, a corporate attempt to minimize costs and therefore maximize profit and competitiveness—clearly good things in a capitalistic system.  Similarly, high quality products should fill people’s needs.  Perhaps cutting down on small cars in the country might protect export profits by further encouraging work on larger ones, which seems like a good capitalistic thing to do.  But, shouldn’t the Japanese people have the types of cars that fit their culture?  The area in which I live, would certainly benefit from much smaller cars.  It presently contains so many “normal” size cars (often containing one person) that they neither seem to move around so well any more, nor find places to park.

 And if people depend on high quality music, information, and entertainment from the internet, TV, and other media, and the media depend on that to attract us to their advertisements as well as on the money we pay them directly, where does the money come from to allow the people who produce such material to develop? Will the quality hold up?  Where will the future outstanding musicians come from?  Listening to the music floating up from the dormitories below us, drum machines seem to be increasing their presence.  Groups using them are more affordable, because drum machines do not require any practice or particular talent to deliver their rhythms and may be adequate for college dances.  But hopefully they are not a portent of future music, because listening to a simple and unvarying repetitive rhythm too long is a good way to be driven mad.

Standardization vs. innovation

In the recent past, I have had a couple more experiences with one downside of innovation—the decrease of standardization among products.  The first was yet another talk that I gave despite failures in my slides, due to first a recalcitrant projector, secondly an uncooperative sound system, and finally, a stuck computer (although I realize this was not due  to lack of standardization).  Both were cured, and I was stimulated to throw in a few words about reliability, predictability, and standardization.  For much of my career, graphics were delivered in talks by means of overhead and Carousel projectors. This equipment was bulky, and also had its own faults (the more mature of you will remember the thrills of a stack of slippery transparencies escaping their bounds, or of slides spewing out of a carousel tray when the retainer ring came loose.)  But such accidents were much rarer than computer—projector screw ups.  Part of the problem is that often one does not bring their own and familiar computer (one does not always want to haul a computer, even a super portable one, on a long and complicated trip in India).  Certainly the hardware and software will improve, but  it will also change, thus preventing the broad knowledge base that accompanied the long use of overhead and Carousel projectors. 

 The second just occurred because we switched our home TV service to Google, which we are able to do because the Stanford Campus has been a beta site, first for Google fiber and now the TV.  We are delighted with the service, both in terms of programming, and the outstanding people that seem to install to it and take care of us.  I was also delighted with the set top boxes, because they offered an HDMI connection, a component TV, connection, a standard and optical audio connection, and a USB connection. 

 My problem, like that of many people, is that although I realize the superiority of HDMI connections, I have a large supply of old, and high quality components that do not have consistent connections.  In fact it seems that  my house, basement, and shop are overflowing with old but operable equipment of mine as well as cast-offs from four kids who have gone on to better (?) things.  I would love to have HDML connections on everything I own, so I could just plug them together, but guess what—the AV in the Adams house is terrific, I am not going  to replace all of my old equipment, and I don’t want to spend money on a bucket of converters.  So I have just spent more time than I wanted to juggling HDMI, component, optical, composite, and coaxial wires, occasionally realizing I have run a signal through a TV and lost surround sound, etc.  Actually, I don’t completely mind not having everything on HDMI plugs, because if I did, something better would come along, and I would be worse off.

 Of course, if change doesn’t happen, a price is paid.  A good example is the refusal of the U.S. to switch to the metric system.  The only other two countries in the world not on the metric system are Myanmar and Liberia.  The cost to us is huge.  Products built for export must be built to the metric system, and products imported usually are.  Since I work on cars for fun and saving money, I have to have a complete set of metric and U.S. wrenches, drills, taps, and measuring tools and have access to machine tools that can cut the proper threads, etc. And I have to keep two types of fasteners in stock. And, of course, there is the inconvenience of travelling outside the U.S. and having to constantly convert to the metric system. There was a series of books produced by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1968 based on a large study of the cost of not committing to the metric system entitled A Metric America, Its Time Has Come.  It was compelling reading, and the government tried to get us to do so, but we ignored them.  Actually, the metric system has been increasingly used in the U.S. for many years.  In particular science is base on it.  But despite several attempts, we do not seem to be willing to accept what is now the world standard, and by our actions we end up needing to follow both it and our rather hilarious system, built on things such as the length of some dead European king’s end thumb joint and foot length. And even if we were officially on the metric system, I would be annoyed by the number of different “standardized” types of screws, nuts and bolts  (see Wikipedia).

 But too much change also incurs a price.  Going back to digital slide projectors.  The standard plug to connect to a computer is the VGA plug.  It ia a rather large plug, but easy to use.  But there are no standard plugs on the computer side.  I use Apple products, and they have changed the projector outlet at least three times, going to ever smaller and more difficult to use plugs.  Undoubtedly there will be a continuing flurry of this as digital devices continue to shrink, become wearable, and attempt to retain product individuality.  I notice that occasionally, when I do take it traveling overseas, my portable computer requires an equivalent weight of adapters (to electric outlets as well as projectors), chargers, extension, USB, and Ethernet cords, mice (when I become annoyed at the track pad), and other doo-dads to ensure it will function when and where needed.  I am sure that I would do better if I were more sophisticated with digital hardware and software, but I DON’T WANT TO BECAME MORE SOPHISTICATED!  I am already ahead of the average bear.  How about more standardization, innovators?

 

 

 

 

 

Fire: Good Product or Bad Product

When I was growing up I loved fire.  I am afraid I still do. I certainly know the downside of fire.  It has always been dangerous to life, limb and property. As a child, while playing with my home-made match shooter (an exciting device constructed from two spring clothes-pins), I once accidentally set fire to a wind-brake full of dead and oily Eucalyptus leaves and stored oil-filed smudge pots, and still remember my terror at the result.  A couple of years ago the house in Southern California my grandparents lived in and in which my mother and I were born burned down. Southern California, where I lived for many years, is famous for combining “wild” fires with homes (fire is necessary for some of the local plants to release their seeds).  And one of the main reasons I left the area in the 1960’s was the air pollution, then caused mainly from non-regulated cars and trucks.

 But fire was both comforting and exciting.  Our house was heated by a fireplace.  My father fortunately arose before the rest of us, and when I awoke in my frigid room, my first act of the day was to grab my clothes and sprint through the house to the fireplace, where I could don them in the warmth of the flames.  My grandparents cooked their food on a wood stove, and on cold days my grandmother would happily sit with her feet in the oven and read. And we kids would rake the above-mentioned Eucalyptus leaves into large piles and burn them, breathing in the exotic smell of their smoke and seeing how long we could stand dangerously close to the flames. 

 On weekends the owner of the local food and hardware store would take us up to the foothills in his truck and we would build a fire and bake weenies and other food.  As I grew older I was trusted with the forge and blowtorch and learned the magic of soldering. welding,  and working hot metal.  When World War II started, a large steel mill was built near to our house, and I was able to go watch the coke being pushed out of the ovens, the blast furnaces tapped, and the molten metal poured into ingots and then rolled into sheets and structural forms. And even smudging the oranges, a necessary but expensive and difficult job, was exciting to me (the photo is of my father in the light of the burning pots). Later I was to become a fanatic back-packer and grew to love open camp fires. While in the Air Force I had the opportunity to experience the fury of afterburners and the majesty of rocket engines.  While working in aerospace, I had an opportunity to witness one of the Apollo launches from close-up, certainly one of the largert and most concentrated fires of all time.

 But, the age of "open" fire may have peaked after somewhere between 500,000 and a million years of use by us and our predecessors.  This is due to vastly increased populations and population density; appreciation of the finite supply of fuels and their value for usages other than burning; increased sensitivity to damage to our environment, and the development of alternate sources of energy.

 And our perceived need for safety and controlling fire seems to grow.  The county in which I live has increasingly discouraged wood fires because of particulate emissions, beginning with burning leaves, and now neither allowing fireplaces to be built into new houses, nor allowing existing fireplaces to be lit on an increasing number of days.  In fact, after a large number of “spare the air” days last winter, I gave up and succumbed to a gas log, even though I once vowed to leave the area if wood fires were outlawed.  Gas logs are convenient, and are somewhat reminiscent of a wood fire, but to me not nearly as satisfying.  Leaves and trimmings are hauled away to be mulched, and my farmer friends in the valley are sharply constrained by no-burn days and restrictions on such things as stubble burning in the fields, since the air in the California central valley is fast losing its purity.  And industry is certainly feeling the need to further control processes involving fire.

 Oh well, I do like clean air. And there are always fireworks (for a while), and I still  have my oxy-acetylene welding rig.