James L Adams—People and Products

New Venture

I seem to have written posts for this blog for over 5 years (over 300 of them). I began the blog to discuss product quality, since it is as topic that has always interested me, and after a heroic and successful effort in the U.S. to improve manufacturing quality (which of course reflects on overall product quality), industry drifted off into other traditional directions (profit, grow-the-organization, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, the manufacturing quality goals were nicely described in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to such critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human users. It is also mentioned in my last post, and discussed at more length earlier in the blog.

 I wrote my book partly as a text that I used to teach a course in the Stanford Engineering school (Good Products, Bad Products), that was taken over by Professor Dave Beach when I retired, who did a wonderful job with it until last year, when the course too was retired. The book suffered from lack of publicity, and perhaps a decreased interest in product quality in the U.S. Surprisingly (or not), although the book’s sales in the U.S. have been disappointing, it is doing much better in India, China, South Korea, and Japan —countries that perhaps are presently more sensitive to the value of quality in products. After all, it was Japan that awakened us in the 1970’s and 80’s. China, India, and South Korea are coming up fast.

But over the years, I also wrote posts on subjects I was also thinking about which ranged from the fit between the directions of technology and people, the joy of working with the hands, engineering, management, and so on.

I never sought wide distribution of these posts, as I wrote them to force myself to think more deeply about my areas of interest, and I did not want to become involved in a full-fledged conversation with large numbers of people, although the responses to my posts were thoughtful and flattering. But now I have been talked into a project that sounds difficult, but worth doing, by Tim Keely, a friend of mine who is an IT person of amazing talent at Stanford. The project is for me to go through these posts, pick the ones I think are the best, organize them, edit them, and allow him to make an e-book (or several) from them. I am going to try.

This will make my posts even fewer in number and perhaps more wandering in nature as I come up with new thoughts for the book(s), but I am looking forward to the attempt and hope you will bear with me. I will continue to write posts when I need more material for this project, or when I can’t bear not to —like commenting on ridiculous wastes of technology and money such as Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border, which hopefully will never happen, but should it, will set an all time record for lack of overall product quality.

So wish me luck. I’ll post progress reports as I go.

Reliability and Quality

A bit over a year ago I ordered a microwave oven after looking at the ratings and comments on the internet. I didn’t spend a lot of time in research, since our old one had failed and a microwave has become very central to our lives, and I figured by now they would have become fairly standardized. When it arrived, it didn’t work. I therefore returned it, after a fair amount of hassle, and bought another brand, which was also highly recommended. The new one worked, but only slightly beyond the one year warranty, and after finding that repairing it would take more time, effort, and money than I considered it worth, I bought yet another brand, which so far is working beautifully—I do like to fix things, but I have to draw the line at some point.

In past posts I have spent a lot of time on product quality, and have mentioned the eight dimensions of quality discussed in a classic paper written by David Garvin and published by the Harvard Business review in 1987, when quality was the hot word, rather than innovation. They are :

PERFORMANCE

FEATURES (APPROPRIATE)

RELIABILITY

CONFORMANCE

DURABILITY

SERVICEABILITY

AESTHETICS

PERCEIVED QUALITY

The bottom two are not discussed in detail, because as Garvin pointed out, they are difficult to handle analytically and matters of personal feelings.

In 2012 I wrote my book Good Products, Bad Products, published by McGraw Hill, to pay more attention to critical “dimensions” of quality that even though difficult to deal with quantitatively, are very important to human user. The Chapter titles are:

PERFORMANCE, COST AND PRICE

HUMAN FIT

CRAFTSMANSHIP

EMOTIONS AND NEEDS

AESTHETICS

SYMBOLISM AND CULTURAL FIT

GLOBAL CONSTRAINTS.

 Although the oven came up short on my list, let us focus on Garvin’s list. As far as aesthetics, my short-lived oven, although not what one would call exciting, was probably okay, because microwave ovens seem to have adopted a clean, sterile, technological look, and, do have fairly standard approaches to turntables, transparent door panels, latches, and so on. As far as perceived quality, the product certainly is visible enough in stores and on the internet and the maker is an old established company, so that one would think that it is of high quality. One of Garvin’s other dimensions, conformance, has to do with whether the product conforms to various regulations, and here it has to follow the rules, or it would not be sold.

But on the others, it does not do well, because it failed (performance,reliability, and durability) is difficult to service, and like many “modern” appliances suffered from the ecstacy designers feel when they realize the power and low cost of modern electronics—trying to include too many features.

The photo  shows the control panel, and herein lies the problem. Forgive the reflections in the photo, because it is a shiny black surface that reflects confusing images at all times, which does not help the user read its relatively delicate script, To make matters worse, the text is not lit , which forced me to hang a battery-operated LED light on a wall at a weird angle so that the words could be read without being blinded by the light itself.

But I had two more major problems with the controls. The first had to do with the functions themselves. Of course, it is necessary to memorize the part of the manual describing the function of most of them (custom set, the difference between auto defrost and express defrost, soften, melt, less, more ) because they are not standardized across ovens or foods, and to experiment a great deal to find out what such pads as “potato”, “rice”, and “popcorn” actually accomplish, since they do not usually result in outcomes the user desires. But I am used to living with such things in these days when manufacturers are attempting to make products appear smarter than they are, and consumers have fantasies of perfect automatic machines and the fantasy is so important than they will accept poor performance. 

But my main problems with the controls was that they failed, and at a slow enough rate that I never returned the oven until it failed completely, at which point the warranty had expired. Very early the potato and reheat buttons quit doing their job, but it is easy to live without them. But over time the remainder kept failing. While the timer still worked we could still use it since we are experienced with these ovens, and when it failed, we could even go with start and stop, but finally they too gave up. At one point, I actually began looking for replacement parts, but by that time I hated the oven so much I thought it deserved to die.

While fighting this dying beast, I could not help noticing our gas stove, which I bought used in 1962 and that, does everything one would want to do as far as cooking is concerned —warming, boiling, frying, stewing, baking, broiling, and even keeping time and automatically turning things on and off— almost total control of cooking for over 50 years, with only occasional needs for cleaning and a bit of tuning up. Near to it is our 20 year old refrigerator, which has served us faithfully with no maintenance yet, and also a Kitchen Aid mixer that is not only 50 years old, but, if you would, has never missed a beat. 

So why do we accept this “digital device” attitude (everyone should have a new one every year)? Granted it makes money for companies, but give us a break. Products should be adequately tested during development, especially if they contain such things as touch pads. Tools should last long enough before failing that we can integrate them into our lives, or at least learn to use them well before they fail. I love our veteran stove, refrigerator, and mixture. And I loved the earlier microwave ovens we owned. We bought our present one (that we like a lot) because it had fewer control options and mechanical controls rather than a touch pad matrix. And the labels on the controls do not require the owner’s manual for interpretation. Assuming it holds up for several years, I will grow to love it.

I never did find out the difference between auto defrost and express defrost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hand Tools— Changing Slowly

Hand tools (no engines, chips, electricity or compressed air) have changed over time, but very slowly compared to what are sometimes called “power tools”. Old tools (100 years ago and more) were interesting, and often beautiful. The photo on the left shows a drill probably used to drill holes for knob-and-tube wiring in a framed or even completed house, and an old wooden brace from the time when braces ruled the roost , well before drills powered by electric motors, and now driven by ion batteries took over. I seem to have accumulated quite a few such tools just because they are beautiful, and using them makes me realize how challenging woodworking used to be.

But many hand tools have changed very little. The photo on the right shows a “modern” pick, shovel, and rake, that have certainly not changed in my lifetime, and are still heavily used in the day of leaf blowers, bull-dozers, and jack hammers. The next one on the left shows three hammers, the top one having belonged to my mother, who was building furniture and helping on the house before I was born, and was given to me as my first hammer. I still use it. I recently bought the one below it, and it is surprisingly similar to the one made 90 years ago. The one at the bottom, also recently bought new, is obviously striving for recognition as high technology, and I am less likely to break the handle, but quite frankly, I am not convinced that it functions a whole lot better than the 90 year old one, and it definitely cost more.

But many hand tools have improved greatly, due to the availability of new materials and manufacturing processes. The final photo shows two “grabbers”. Some of you may remember the large one with the wooden handle, because it is typical of those used in grocery and other stores to take items off of the top shelves. It is fun to use, as it is large and clunky and gives you the choice of one of two handles to close the grippers, depending on how high the desired object is.

But the small one, given to me when I had knee replacements a few years ago in hopes that I would not climb on rickety stools to reach things, and that I could get my pants on before I became limber again without bothering my wife, is indeed impressive. I had not had experience with these things at all, but this one is strong, able to fold for traveling, and very grabby indeed. It is extremely simple, relying on a simple spring to keep it open, and a nylon cord to close the claw. It is very light weight, the structure being a simple square tube of thin aluminum, and the two surfaces that close on the target are brilliantly made. I tested it in the hospital on everything from glasses of water, through pillows and picking up pills, to a large vase of flowers that was in my room. And yes, I still have it.

A professor friend of mine, who had also gone through surgery and was given one, fell so in love with it that he decided that his world had increased in size by four feet (roughly twice the length of the grabber), and proceeded to add four feet to the width of the desk in his office, and two feet to the height of his bookshelves. He also claimed to have radically increased the usable storage space in his garage and closet at home, and loves to entertain himself by challenging his friends to games of skill with his grabber and trouncing them viciously.

Most hand tools have improved over time, but slowly, and that is part of the reason I love them. Using them gives me more satisfaction than power tools and in the long run allows me to keep more fingers, and I do not have to spend money and develop new skills because improvements occur (as with digital devices). They are generally easier on the environment, offer free exercise, and let you impress you friends, neighbors, and sometimes even your spouse with your skills. Although in all honesty I must admit I am fighting the temptation to buy a new drill motor and electric screw driver because they now come with lithium ion batteries, which produce more power and hold more charge than the nickel metal hydride batteries in my present one. And I use lots of machinery when working with metal.  Nobody is pure.

Potential Good News for Lots of People

Most people, especially males, suffer loss of hearing as they age. This is a much larger problem than our society admits. Helen Keller, a woman who lost her hearing and sight at the age of two, and became well known for her ability to overcome these handicaps, claimed that given a choice between one or the other, she would prefer to be blind. A famous quote from her was “Blindness separates people from things: deafness separates people from people”. I have known outstanding teachers who retired because they felt separated from their students, and business people who felt separated from their clients.   I am fortunate in having so far retained my hearing ability , but at my age I am surrounded by people having mild to serious problems engaging in everything from meetings to casual social conversation.

As the two New York Times articles here, and here indicate, this is a widespread problem that will become more severe as populations age. Hearing aids have improved markedly over time, but only a fraction of the people who could benefit from them own one, for reasons ranging from cost to “looking old”. They also can be uncomfortable to wear and have short battery lives. Cost is probably primary, since the top of the line instruments can cost thousands of dollars, partly because of the archaic process needed to obtain one in countries such as the U.S.

In this day and age of technological wonders, especially the shrinkage in cost and size of electronic devices, this should definitely not be the case. But from these articles it looks as though there is hope. If some of the research and development money and talent going into the design of apps, trivial changes in operating systems, “smart watches”, and such things as autonomous cars could be spent on making better, cheaper hearing aids, a very large number of people could remain happily much more engaged in a full life.

The odd thing about this situation is that it seems that hearing aids could be rather easily matched to potential customers by use of tests administered by a computer coupled with a bit of fitting to the geometry of the potential customer’s ears. To throw a medical procedure into the mix without the coverage of insurance seems absurd. But from my own experience being involved in a start-up based on a potentially cheap serum-based test for allergies, I am not naïve about the difficulty of changing tradition. But in this case we are talking about large numbers of people who could be benefited by some of innovation both in the design and the distribution of hearing aids. I read an article about Facebook’s pressure on computer companies to either reduce the cost of the equipment needed to do social networking by a factor of ten, or to make it operate ten times as fast. How about reducing the cost of obtaining a hearing aid by a factor of ten and ensuring that they all have re-chargeable batteries?

Large Quantities and Elections

The presidential election is beginning to become more real, as the candidates are being forced to deal with more serious questions – such as the federal budget. This is the time when the federal debt becomes an issue and people begin to speak of trillions. This is interesting, because most people know that a trillion is a large number, but have no “feel” for it. That is because most people can live happily avoiding large quantities, and tend to do so because their lives are complicated enough. We shorthand such quantities (using trillion, or tera instead of “a thousand thousand thousand thousand”), but even that does not capture the exponential nature of powers of ten. A short and clever movie was made by Charles Eames, a famous designer, in 1977, and was entitled Powers of Ten. It is now not viewed as much as it used to be, but perhaps should be if we are going to deal with numbers such as a trillion. If you have never seen it, it is here on You Tube.

Around election time, the U.S. national debt comes up (federal debt in 2015 was about $19,009,230,758,000, or  19 trillion dollars, but of course there is state debt, individual debt, and so on). Politicians like to blame the other party and other causes for this, but the government traditionally overspends. But how much should we worry about this? Do we really know what 19 trillion is? Techies like me would approximate it as 1.9x10¹³ dollars, but even that is hard to get a feeling for. If we break that down to on the order of $60,000 or so per person in the U.S., we can think about it more clearly, but it isn’t like our personal debt, because governments can print money and sell bonds, but we can’t.

I think most of us can get our heads around a million, since many houses now cost that much, and after all, a million is a thousand thousands. But a billion is more difficult. Bill Gates has a net worth of about 82 billion dollars, but to appreciate that, it is necessary to put it into a form that is more understandable. For instance, the world’s population is about seven billion, so he could give 11 or 12 dollars to everyone on earth, and he and his family could still have five billion to cover their personal expenses. But if he has it invested in interests that return him 5% per year, he is making over 40 million a year, so he could keep his capital growing and live quite well.

But 19 trillion? It is a very big number. Let’s say I had a job which required me to type 19 trillion x’s on my computer. Using my trusty smart phone, I see that I can type this many—xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or about 70 in ten seconds. That is or on the order of 500 in a minute if I practiced a lot. That’s believable, since when I took a typing course in high school I got up to 100 words a minute (piano player). According to the Guiness book of records, Barbara Blackburn is the champ at 212 words a minute, and typing test words average about five letters each. But I obviously couldn’t keep up this pace either physically or mentally for a whole day, so let’s imagine that with training I could put in the equivalent of six hours a day without going mad, and in the process type 60x500, or 30,000 x’s per hour, or 45 million per year (5 day week, 2 week vacation).   That means that even a million is a big number. But a billion is a thousand million, so to type a billion x’s would take I,000,000,000 divided by 45,000,000, or a bit over 22 years. So 19 trillion? How about four hundred and eighteen thousand years or so? Of course if we put 100,000 people on the job, they could finish in about four and a half years. (I may have slipped up on the arithmetic here, but you get the idea)

But how much should we care about the national debt? A lot. A simple discussion of the components of the national debt is here. It is a complex thing, ranging from repayment of bonds owned by individuals, companies, and governments inside and outside of the U.S. as well as intergovernmental loans, and other such complexities. and we have to cover the interest on much of it. Unlike individuals and companies, governments can not go bankrupt (as a few U. S cities and foreign countries have) and easily recover, if at all. Bankruptcy of the U .S. is unthinkable, since the U.S. as it is would no longer exist. Eventually the bill must be covered.

Focusing in on the election, many groups are calculating the effects on the national debt of the economic plans being proposed by the candidates. One of the less biased groups is called the Tax Foundation, and their findings are here. A more politically liberal group is the Brookings Institution, and their conclusions are here. They are saying that in ten years, Trump’s plan could add over ten trillion dollars to the national debt, and perhaps up to 80 % (over 15 trillion).

Trump is, of course, telling us that his plan will benefit us all at no cost, the increase in expenses and decrease in tax income will be overcome by the tremendous savings he will make in the costs of government and the surge in economic activity that will result. Are we going to continue to believe that one? Hopefully not, although we have accepted similar arguments in the past. We seem to be eternal suckers for supply-side economics.

But too many of us will focus on what the candidates say, rather than what they will do. And we will not pay as much attention as we should to the numbers , because they are so large they have little meaning compared to the incomes and expenses we are used to.

I will talk a bit more about magnitudes in my next post, because our ability to avoid thinking deeply about very large (and small) quantities is being overwhelmed by the necessity of doing so, whether elections are forthcoming or not.

Quality for Free

In my book, Good Products, Bad Products, I briefly discuss cost (to maker) and price (to customer).  These often relate to overall product quality, but not necessarily in a logical or linear manner.  But it is definitely the case that we are all sensitive to price when acquiring products.  But how about products, even reasonably high quality ones, that can be obtained for free? To many of us, especially those of us who do not have the benefit (?) of great wealth, these have a particular cachet.

 I used to like to read Wired magazine, but it has over time become such a promo-piece for expensive products (full page add for Gucci on the back of the Feb 1,2015 issue) and the digital industry that I no longer subscribe to it.  But like many Conde Naste publications, it still comes to my house, probably either because they think I will subscribe again, or because they can keep me in their circulation count (attractive to advertisers).

 This issue has an interesting editorial by Scott Dadich, the editor in chief, which starts out with a mea- culpa on his addiction to “shiny new gadgets”, followed by raves about Microsoft’s Project HoloLens .  But then he brings up the fact that the rapid turnover in new gadgets results in great numbers of still usable devices ending up in landfills.  He then mentions an article in the issue by Randall Sullivan about a person named Matt Malone, an expert in corporate security and a professional dumpster diver, in that he finds products (often new) that have been discarded and resells them at a lower cost.  In fact, he states that if he was to do this full time, he could make at least $250,000 in the Austin. Texas area alone.  The editorial is here, and the article is here.

 I resonate with Matt Malone, even though I have never met him.  First of all, he is adding to the world’s recycling effort, and secondly, I am an amateur dumpster diver and finder of fine objects in trash piles.  I don’t sell them for profit, but rather I either give them away, or keep them because I love them— they appeal to me and they are FREE.

  The photo at the left shows a “free swap” book box I built for my wife for Christmas.  She loves books, and since the area in which we live is full of academics, who in turn have and read lots of books, it gets a heavy trade.  But it is a miracle to my wife and I, because it is an ever-changing source of free books right next to our house (sorry Amazon). 

When I first arrived at Stanford it was "upgrading" and discarding many "old" items.  As an example, they were re-doing teaching spaces and filling dumpster boxes with captains chairs that had been used in the old rooms.  I snagged a half dozen of them for my house, because they were comfortable and showed the patina of history.  Ironically enough, some years later, Stanford was putting brass plaques on the few that were left. and awarding them to major gift donors. And people were so eager to acquire new and "modern" equipment that they did not value the beauty and historical value of some of the old.

 The two photos below show  an old medical instrument that was used for examining tissue sections, and a few rescued objects that are in my office.  The adding machine is of great value because none of our present students have the faintest idea of what it is.  The two instruments are there because I like them.  And I’ll bet you don’t have as good a whiffle ball container as the one in the photo below them.

 

And I do not restrict myself to dumpsters.  My wife is a compulsive gardener, and  has a constant need for pots. The photo below  shows her pot supply.   We never have to buy them, because Stanford has a free trash pickup for all campus homeowners twice a year, and I have a pickup, with which I can easily keep her in pots, as well as miscellaneous yard furniture, shelves, garden tools, and other goodies.

 I must admit that she is somewhat embarrassed that we will be seen by the neighbors as we go through their trash, but I am proud to be helping the ecosphere and our budget, as we acquire objects of high quality that are no longer appreciated by their former owners. 

 

Product Packaging/Marketing Madness

The marketing mania which surrounds us has caused products to often be overwhelmed by packaging.   Despite my safety glasses, I recently got a small piece of metal in my eye.  No damage, but the doctor who found it recommended that I use eye drops for a few days.  Since we didn’t seem to have any at home, and since my wife was going to the grocery store, I asked her to pick up some.  I expected the usual small bottle with stopper over drip end, but instead I received a 2 inch by 3 inch by 4-1/2 inch box, containing six complicated plastic moldings, each of which could be torn into four pieces, each piece containing a small amount of a fluid – must have been eye drops.  The box served the usual marketing purposes, pointing out that they were “high performance” (zero to sixty in four seconds?), and provided extended protection, fast symptom relief, and contain no preservatives.  Also that they were the “#1 doctor recommended brand”, and that they “elevate the science of dry eye therapy to a new level”.  And furthermore being markedly larger than the usual small bottles, and therefore being highly visible, they showed up on the counter and were able to contain a good bit of advertising. 

 And, the instructions as to how you tear the plastic moldings apart and drop the liquid in your eye included a warning that after putting one or two drops in the eye, one should throw away the container and definitely not try to use the remaining fluid—convenient for the seller of the eye drop fluid.  It would mean that the box of beautifully molded parts would only deliver two dozen doses.

 I was dazzled by the tooling necessary to form the moldings with the fluid inside of them,  and entertained by the attempt to promote eye drops to a more sophisticated medical product.  My grandfather was a blacksmith and farmer before the age of safety glasses, and was often getting foreign bodies in his eye.  My grandmother made him eye drops.  As I remember, a cup of water, a partial spoon of  salt, a pinch of baking soda, and a couple of drops of glycerine, boiled for a few minutes, and returned to room temperature, and voila—eye drops.  Undoubtedly the modern ones are manufactured with great precision in a sterile environment, but come on, the science of dry eye therapy?

  The photo shows the eye drops in contrast to a traditional small bottle.  The “kit” and the small bottle cost approximately the same, but the bottle contains much more fluid, and does not try to tell me I can’t reuse it.  The process of dropping the fluid in the eye is the same in both cases, so I don’t see any gain in convenience, and I would have to throw away all those nice plastic moldings (undoubtedly getting the unused fluid on the floor).  So I will happily stick to the traditional bottle, knowing I can get lots more drops for a buck and that I can feel good about not succumbing to marketing people trying to sell me another new “innovation”.

Good Product —Metropolitan Opera Hi-Def Simulcasts.

Marian and I discovered these productions a couple of  years ago, and I, to my amazement, have become a serious opera fan.  I have always liked certain music from operas, but live opera included such things as long drives to San Francisco, difficulty in finding a parking place, expensive tickets, cramped seats, and inability to see very well (the closer seats were more than expensive).  A theater in Palo Alto a few blocks from my house presents the simulcasts, and throws in free parking 100 feet or so from the door, extraordinarily comfortable seats with lots of leg room and usually empty seats on each side of you, $25 tickets, excellent coffee and ice cream as well as popcorn, and a very large screen and outstanding sound.

 And a presentation that puts you in the action both on and off stage.  I am still trying to understand how they do it.  Although the performances are broadcast live, the camera work is of movie quality, and the views of everything from singers to orchestra members, to scenery, to back-stage activities are seamless, shot from all angles and distances, seemingly perfectly integrated, and needless to say, up close.

 Before these simulcasts, I had not appreciated such things  as the acting skills of the performers (relatively cheap seats), or the effort spent to stage an opera.  The last one Marian and I saw was Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, which entranced us for 6 hours (it is not easy to entrance the two of us for that long),  plus two long breaks in which we could watch the 100 person stage crews do such things as erect a full-sized section of old-time Nurnberg and scenery for the final act, which begins as a discussion in the interior of a house and ends with a huge pageant in the town park.  And sandwiched in between were the usual interviews with performers, which shows them to be regular people with excellent senses of  humor.

 One of the all-time great interviews in the Simulcasts we have seen was of a formerly little known tenor named Jay Hunter Morris, who grew up in Paris, Texas, and worked  his way from church choir to back-up roles in less known opera houses.  The performance was Siegfried of Wagner’s Ring cycle,  one of the most difficult roles in the opera.  Siegfried sings almost constantly through the several hour-long opera. Only a few tenors in the world are thought capable of performing this role at the top level, and eight days before the first performance the tenor scheduled for this production realized he could not do the performance.  In came Jay Morris, who not only performed it brilliantly, and loved the part, but when interviewed proved to be a more than lovable small-town boy-makes-good. I shall never forget him lying on a couch trying to recover for the next act, and excitedly saying things such as  “I am so tired, but this is so fun”, and “who’d believe someone from Paris, Texas could wind up singing at the Met?”. He had definitely been discovered.  Needless to say, he is now world famous and the receipient of many honors.

 I am usually a believer that live performances are superior to media ones (obvious exception of movies). But I am well aware that attendees at Stanford’s new football stadium are often watching the big TV screens hanging in the middle of the field rather than the live players, and such heresy even occurs at Giants baseball games.  And I certainly realize that the Met Simulcasts have made me lose my interest in attending the live opera in San Francisco, or in New York for that matter. And I am very happy to see technology remain quietly in the backround, which I think should be the case, and yet deliver a product with the value of these Simulcasts.

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.

Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, Stocks, and Technology

  I am a fan of Michael Lewis books.  They are fun to read, filled with heroes and villains, and even better give insights into what is to me an exotic and foreign land — that of Wall Street and high (matter of perspective) finance.  I have just finished his latest book, Flash Boys (information in recommended reading column on the left of the blog).  As you can see from the internet, it is already highly controversial, but also presently number one on the New York Times non-fiction best sellers list.

  Michael is a very bright and likable person, who has a knack for causing people to tell him things they probably shouldn’t, which is of course a valuable attribute in the vocation he has chosen.  I met him years ago when his wife, Tabitha Soren, came to Stanford as a holder of a  Knight Journalism Fellowship, awarded to outstanding professional journalists.  He was interested in doing a piece on Silicon Valley venture capitalists, we talked a bit, and he asked me to introduce him to some.  Easily done, with the result that an excellent article appeared, describing the Silicon Valley venture capital industry very well, but also outing a bit of dirty linen that several members of the VC community did not want to become public.  I liked the article, but a couple of the people I told him to look up didn’t return my phone calls for a while.

 One thing that impresses me is that he has an incredible knack to convey the nature of the seemingly strange (to me) behavior of people investing large amounts of money in hopes of making huge profits.  Among other things, Flash Boys is about the impact that computers have had and are having on the stock market.  In brief, computers now handle large movements of money rather than people, and the speed at which they can make decisions and the speed at which buy/sell messages move has become a critical factor in trading, resulting in great emphasis on such things as the length of fiber cables and the speed of digital components. Large buys and sells affect the value of stocks.  When stock transactions were completed in seconds, traders were able to follow them.  But now first milliseconds and then microseconds are important for a number of reasons.  As an example, Computers are fast enough to sense a buy or sale well before it is complete, and use this knowledge to profit by such things as transactions through other exchanges.  The age of high frequency trading was  the result of this.

 Flash Boys is an excellent story about the effects of technology on a traditional business and the interaction between computer specialists and traditional traders and managers.  Books like this open my eyes a lot, because my attitude toward money was probably formed by growing up in a small town after the depression.  I tend to relax into thinking that it represents something fixed.  I certainly do not consider myself an investor, but Michael Lewis books do make me think about the trustworthiness of the money on which I depend on as a retired person.  High frequency trading does not affect my meager stock transactions, but it affects the economy, and the economy affects me.

 I recommend the book for a number of reasons, not the least being that it will give you another look at the influence of technology when it strikes a traditional business.  And if you are not on Wall Street working in finance, it will give you some things to think and worry about.

 

Non-Digital Writing Tools

 I have just returned from spending a week at my Sacramento Valley hide-away working on my old machinery, and on a couple of books.  The weather was beautiful (spring time in California), and I am now feeling terrific—partly because I got a lot done, partly because I love to work on old machinery, and partly because I was outside.

  I came to realize some time ago, that screens (as in movie, computer, projection, pad, phone, etc) do not like the outdoors.  The picture is degraded by sunlight and the device forming the picture would rather be dropped onto a carpet rather than onto rocks or into water.   Unfortunately, I like being outdoors, and I do not like trailing long extension cords to power such devices, whether directly or through batteries.  Computers are indoor things, especially if one needs a screen large enough to be able to work on two full-sized pages simultaneously. Therefore I often tend to resort to more vintage equipment, i.e. pencils or pens and paper, because they work very well outside.

 But I use such tools inside as well.  My wife and I have learned to re-cycle our unwanted mail (almost all of it) by keeping  unopened letters in piles in various locations around the house to use for making notes, lists, or whatever. Eventually we re-cycle them like good campus residents. This proves faster and more convenient than constantly trying to remember where our pads or phones are, turning on our lap-tops, or running upstairs to our desk tops.  And pencils and pens are required for certain family traditions.  I lie in bed on Sunday mornings and struggle with the New York Times crossword puzzle.  It is in the rather limp magazine section, the paper is rather slick, and computers are not allowed in the room since due to the time difference, red-hot puzzle people on the east coast have finished the puzzle and put the answer on the web.  Since few people are strong enough not to take advantage of this, computers must be barred.  Due to the nature of the limp magazine and the texture of the paper, high quality pencils are needed, not only to form easily readable words, but because it is often necessary to erase one’s brilliant, but ill fitting entry.

 Unfortunately, it seems as though as we move to computers, the quality of non-digital writing tools is not only not improving, but decreasing.  I have long loved the common wooden pencil with eraser.  But pencil lines seem to be becoming less consistent, and erasers seem to wear out more rapidly and do a poorer job of erasing.  The sample below shows the work of four pencils I picked up from a coffee cup on my desk where I store them.  The ends had has five hard swipes  with the eraser of the pencil that made them. They represented four different brands,.  As can be seen, the lines they made were similar, except for the fourth one, which was fainter, and the success of the eraser went from acceptable to awful.  This is the first time I have ever tried to compare pencils.  The first two were old established brands (Dixon and Faber Castell).  The last two I will not mention, because this is not a scientific comparison.

 The message is that it seems that one cannot simply grab a wooden pencil any more and have it perform as expected.  And in fact, the web is reflecting this by producing much information on them.  See the list of pencil-related web sites here, or just put “pencil blogs” into your browser and ignore such things as eyebrow pencils.

 The situation with so-called mechanical pencils is even more complex because of the many approaches they take to hold the lead (which of course contains no lead – it is a mixture of graphite and clay), feed it, keep it from breaking, etc.  And such pencils tend not to include reasonable erasers. Furthermore good ones cost too much if you tend to lose them and loan them to friends (which I do).  And they are less rewarding to chew and to drum on one’s desktop.

 And then there are pens.  Sharpies make great indelible lines on almost anything, until you neglect to put on the cap, in which case they will rapidly die.  Such is true for most “give away” ball point pens, some of which will come with a retractable feature to protect pockets, and some with a fragile plastic cap that soon disappears.  I am having great luck with a pen entitled Uniball Vision Elite, but it is a bit pricey and tends to run out of ink rather rapidly.  And of course none of the lines from such pens can be erased, and therefore are of limited value for amateur cross word puzzle solvers like me.

 Is the quality of  pencils and pens being neglected as we move toward computers? Is it even going down hill?  A worry to us who like to doodle, make sketches, and work on books in the sunshine.   

 

Product quality, ignition switches, and humans.

 I worked a short time for General Motors some 50 years ago, did not love them then, and do not particularly love them now.  But since we are again going through a familiar dance about the evils of General Motors which includes the media, Congress, attorneys, and various people grieving over the loss of loved ones, we should keep a few things in mind.

 Such dances have benefits, because companies do tend to become complacent about various aspects of product quality in the heat of seeking to increase their profits, stay at least even with their competition, and focus on marketing and growth,  Occasionally they do need to be reminded by the press and public anger that they should tighten up their ship.

 But General Motors sells some 2,750,000 automobiles a year, does business in 140 countries, and has a quarter of a million employees. In an activity such as this, many decisions are made, some of which in retrospect seem wrong.  Also, in a sample of 250,000 people, a few may not have safety uppermost in mind.  Humans are human.

 Each year there are approximately 1.3 million automobile related deaths in the world.  This amounts to 3500 per day, or one every six seconds.  In the U.S. the death toll is about 35,000 per year.  I drove through San Francisco yesterday when a long-distance foot race had the city traffic diverted into strange areas and made most drivers very angry. I then then came home down a jammed freeway with various impatient people trying to beat the crowd.  I think it is miraculous that only 35,000 people in the  U.S. are killed in automobile accidents each year. The equipment is pretty good.  The drivers are the problem.

 It is tragic if 13 people have been killed by faulty ignition swtches, and criminal if information that this was likely to happen was knowingly with-held.  But whether we like it or not, approximately 55 million people die in the world each year ( we will all eventually be one of them), and 2.5 million in the U.S., so 13 deaths, although tragic to family and friends, would have gotten only local media attention, had not the faulty ignition switch been discovered.  So maybe there is a bit of jump-on-evil-G.M. going on because it attracts media attention, offers politicians a platform for righteousness,  and gives frustrated people on the internet a chance to vent on big business, Bush, Obama, Democrats, Republicans, terrorists, or whatever.

 But it is important to remember that people screw up (especially in hind sight and if many of them are involved) and things break—always have, always will (especially if complicated).  Yesterday my relatively new HP scanner/Apple computer combination quit scanning.  I checked the connections, the system settings, rebooted everything, still no luck.  After I finish this post I will uninstall the driver and install a new one.  But it may still not work.  It's failure will not kill me, but this is a relatively simple and mass produced digital system.  I often have trouble with my digital electronics.  Still anxious for automatic cars?

 It is always possible to make more reliable products.  But it costs.  As an extreme example, the Mars Curiosity Rover and the spacecraft that landed it successfully in August 2012, were necessarily built to be highly reliable, and JPL had many years of experience in building reliable planetary robotic spacecraft.  And this was a particularly challenging project.  But the cost for the rover and and associated spacecraft was 1.8 billion dollars and over a decade was necessary to design, develop, and adequately test it.  It survived launching, 9 months in space, landing, and is happily doing its mission.  But 1.8 billion dollars would buy 60,000 General Motors cars at $30,000 each. 

 True, the cost would come down somewhat if a large number of Curiosity rovers and associated spacecraft were built, but extraordinary effort in design, manufacturing and testing each one would still be necessary to ensure that nothing would fail.  The space shuttle received such attention, but remember the o-rings?  Tesla automobiles are receiving unusual care, although a couple of battery incidents have received media coverage, but their relative production is low and their prices are high. if their output and prices approach those of Toyota’s, will they be able to avoid occasionally getting into trouble?

Again, things break and users and producers screw up. Trying to prevent this, or at least minimizing its impact, is a difficult part of the challenge in securing high quality products. 

 

Stanford Good Products, Bad Products course, ME314, 2014

Winter quarter is almost done, but it does not seem like winter here in California, because the sun continues to shine, and the farmers (including my older son) continue to become depressed.  Perhaps it will never rain again and we will return to desert, where we began before building our immense snow-dependent water system.

 The course good Products Bad Products is also almost done.  The Course outline for this year is here.  But since I discussed the course in previous posts, I won’t go into detail again. If you go to the Categories section on the left of the blog below the Recommended books section, and click on "ME 314 Stanford course 2013, you will get some of it. But the web-site for the students “choose a good product and a bad one” assignments is no longer accessible from outside Stanford. Ashish Goel, who was one of the highly competent Teaching Assistants last year, and was in charge of all things having to do with the internet, was kind enough to put it back on an publicly accessible web site.  The URL is here. If you would like to look at some of the student choices and short discussions, open the URL and have a good time.  If you click on the title of the entries, photographs will appear as well as the complete short description by the student choosing the the products as an example of good or bad.                                      

 The course ends with amazingly well designed media-rich presentations of good products and bad ones based on each of the chapter areas of my books. Stanford students are good at media, and Dave Beach pushes it in the course, as you can see from the outline.

I wrote the book because the issue of product quality is extremely complex, subject to personal tastes and judgements, and in general difficult to define in a sound byte.  But by spending effort judging products and arguing about them, it is possible to become much more sophisticated when dealing with the topic. Try it.

 

Product Quality, Luxury Watches, and Silliness

 My wife and I have a long tradition of Spending part of Sunday morning in bed reading the New York Times and eating breakfast munchies.  I like the  Times in general, but find its Fashion magazine increasingly inconsistent with the rest of the newspaper.  I can guess why it is included, since it is heavily given over to obviously highly paid advertisements often for luxury goods.  This is the successful format for many magazines such as Architectural Digest—read about how the Celebs live and how to spend vast amounts of money on things that will make others realize how rich you are.

 They begin this magazine with a section they call Lookout, which comments on various expensive things to do.  Today (October 6, 2013) my wife pointed out a small section entitled “Market Report” that talked about travel watches. We both have travelled a lot, and quickly learned to take minimum luggage, and nothing that you would mind losing or having lifted in the subway.  The section begins with the statement “Serious travelers deserve a world-class watch that can seamlessly keep track of up to 24 time zones.”

 First of all, one only needs a watch that can keep track of 24 time zones if one is unable to add and subtract. Secondly, the need for a watch is disappearing, because ones friendly cell/smart phone always has the time prominently featured.  If one chooses not carry such a thing (I am often guilty),  in urban areas a clock is usually visible without spending a lot of effort finding one, and in the country people will guess the time for you. But these days, due to such things as quartz crystals and small efficient batteries, if one wants a travel watch it is possible to find a nice low-cost one that if lost, can be replaced with little pain.  My wife is in love with the Timex Indiglo (see photo), which keeps very good time, is very easy to read (even including a light on the dial), and has the contemporary “large” look.  It is not the cheapest watch available, but can be had for about $30.00.

 So what does the Market Report suggest?  Such things as the Girard-Perregaux Shopping World Timer watch at $26,100, the Dior Timepieces Christal 8 watch at $63,000, and the Cartier Tortue Multiple Time Zones XXL watch, price on request.  Or you can purchase a Rolex for between $10 ,000 and $70,000 and try to look like Roger Federer or a successful financier (incidentally, excellent Rolex copies are available for about $150.)

 Like most people, when I travel, I like to experience the local scene, which means I occasionally find myself wandering through rather questionable neighborhoods and taking local subways and buses.  The median income in the world is approximately $2000 per year, which is about $5.50 per day.  That means that half the world is living on that or less.  If I were living on five dollars a day, a $50,000 watch is equivalent to 10,000 days, or 27 years of income.  If I was constrained to such an income and saw a tourist walking down the street with what I recognized as a Dior Timepieces Christal 8 watch, would I be tempted to appropriate it?   Well…………..

 I was not born to money, and I am not impressed by people who make a show of their wealth, so I am biased about luxury goods. But I am sure that if I had $100,000 (or $100,000,000,000) to throw around, I would not buy a new $50.000 watch, especially to take travelling. I would much rather support a nice villager in India who was unable to work for 27 years (or perhaps more). 

Participation or Observation —Technology, sports, and athletics

 Some time ago I spent ten years chairing, teaching, and doing research in the Stanford University program in Science, Technology, and Society, which focuses on attempting to understand the interaction between the three.  I caught the habit, and think about this relationship every time I come up on an obvious change in one.

 The present Americas Cup races are a case in point.  The boats and the TV coverage are amazing. If you haven’t been watching, the capsizing of one of the Oracle boat six months ago is shown here. It gives  you some idea of the complicated and sophisticated nature of these boats. A long video of a race between the Italian boat and the New Zealand boat, which won the Vuitton cup in race #8 with the necessary help of GPS technology, since the race was run partly in heavy fog, is here (search through the video for the actual racing footage).

 The boats are at the edge, if not over the edge, of technology—hydrofoil catamarans with a vertical wing rather than a fabric mainsail, 72 feet long, 7 tons, 134 foot mast, and the latest in carbon fiber and titanium fittings, capable of 50 knots speed in a 15 knot wind.  But over the edge in cost, dependability, and skill and strength requirements for the crews.  They are huge, but relatively delicate, tending to get in trouble if winds are too strong or water too rough, but wonderful to watch—and apparently it costs on the order of 100 million dollars to participate in this event. 

 My wife and I probably will make the short trip  up to San Francisco and watch one or two of the races between the U.S. and New Zealand boat, but as in most major sports, we will miss the superimposed information and various up-close and overhead camera angles of the TV.  And I will be entertained, but not feel part of the game, since I will certainly never be on the crew of, or probably even ride on one of these superboats. If I owned a traditional sail boat, I don’t know whether they would inspire me or kind of spoil my fun.

I often wonder whether increasing technology and investment in sports/athletics and other activities is turning us slowly into a nation of watchers, rather than participants.

When I was in high school, our crummy cars were a big deal to us.  The “sport” of informal drag racing from stoplights, or on empty sections of lightly used roads, was part of the game.  I don’t remember any accidents due to this, because traffic was much lighter then than now, and our cars wouldn’t go all that fast. 

 There had been specially built cars competing for speed over a quarter mile on various desert dry lakes, but no precise timing available in informal competitions.  In 1950  an “official” drag strip was started in Santa Ana, California, and the sport of professional (pay to participate) drag racing began.  Originally it was possible to enter these races with modified production cars because entry fees were low, and car expenses consisted to gasoline to drive to Santa Ana. 

 But now, amateurs can’t play.  It once was considered noteworthy to get ones car up to 60 miles an hour in a quarter mile. Top dragsters are breaking 300 miles per hour in an elapsed time of under four seconds.  To put this in perspective, if a car traveling at 100 mile an hour passed the starting line and a waiting dragster and tripped the green light signaling the dragster to go, the dragster would catch up with the 100 mph car 1/3 of the way down the quarter mile course.  By the time the 100 mph car reached the half way point of the course, the dragster would have crossed the finish line. Another interesting number—the 500 cubic inch engine of a top fuel driver produces about 7000 horsepower during its brief run, more than the first eight rows of cars at the NASCAR Daytona 500.This kind of performance requires very high technical sophistication and vast amounts of money.

 If you never have seen an example, click here and turn your volume up.  It is a very short video of a race between two people,  John Force, who  is one of the all time heroes of drag facing and who has several kids now racing, and his daughter Courtney —a sweet father-daughter experience that my daughter and I cannot duplicate—too expensive and the technology is too sophisticated (also we would kill outselves).

 This is clearly a different world from my high school days.  After the sport became professionalized, and laws tightened up, street drags became much rarer, if not nonexistent in areas such as the one in which I now live. For a while,  I went to races to watch the action and be amazed at the equipment.  But then the cars became so fast that I quit going, because I couldn’t identify with the cars or the drivers any longer.  So I, like many people, ended up watching them on television or the internet.  Interestingly, my grandchildren and their friends seem to have little interest in owning or driving a car—  Perhaps because automobiles are so sophisticated that they are boring?  Certainly they are more difficult to modify than old ones, and it is more difficult to find and legally drive cheap old relative wrecks such as we had in high school.

The same thing has happend in athletics.  When I was in college, it was not such a big deal to play inter-collegiate athletics (especially in schools with crummy teams like the one I attended) because this was before the days of recruiting, sports scholarships, and big TV money.  I certainly was never an outstanding athlete, but I spent a lot of time playing basketball and other sports.

But now it is essentially impossible to “walk onto ” the varsity team of a major sport in universities such as Stanford, and equipment continues to become more expensive and facilities more difficult to find,   so people who are very good athletes are reduced to watching sports on TV or the internet and observing people wearing and using the latest equipment including vast stadiums and arenas outfitted with the latest communication equipment (and if in college enjoying an athletic scholarship or if professional a few million dollars a year), and try to get their exercise in gyms full of stale air and expensive high-tech equipment that looks like it should be in a rehabilitation center and gives us little sense of accomplishment or joy of being part of a competing team. Great strides have been made in arranging team sports accessible to kids.   Maybe we need to put more effort into amateur sports for adults, complete with less formidable financial and technological barriers to entry and participation.

 

 

 

 

Product Quality—Tesla Motors and How to Make an Impact

Tesla Motors was incorporated in 2003.  One of my sons. a green engineer who loves small companies and working on exciting things, but who had not worked in the automotive industry, joined them in 2005.  I have therefore been following the company, I must say with increasing pleasure.  When my son joined the company, it consisted of people who were highly motivated to convince the world that electricity was a feasible and in fact very attractive way to power automobiles.  In fact, electrically powered automobiles had been a long ambition of Elon Musk, one of its founders, its leading investor, and now its CEO.

 Due to the dismal performance of attempts to start car companies (Fisker, DeLorean), I suspect many people thought they would not succeed, especially because the employees were more Silicon Valley than Detroit.  Even I thought they had picked a very large challenge, although certainly a worthy one. But the company is succeeding beautifully, and in the process changing opinions and values in a very conservative industry with very conservative customers.  Even now, there are rumors of troubles and problems with the cars and the company running around, but these are founded on love of large V-8 engines. the smell of gasoline, and on nostalgia, not on reality. Reality can better be seen by the awards and enthusiasm the model S is getting, by its sales and back orders, and better yet, by driving one.

Last Sunday my son took my wife and I out riding in a model S that he was acquiring some data on, and it is very difficult to criticize.  It is beautiful, luxurious, handles magnificently, reaches 60 mph in slightly over 4 seconds, and has a range of over 200 miles.  If you are not familiar with the car, here is its Wikipedia write-up.

 The only concern I would have if I owned one is that the digital opportunities are so lavish that one might worry about driver distraction.  The company is building rapid charging stations and battery swapping stations as fast as it can to augment the basic process of charging the battery through 220 volt house current. And it is exporting to Europe and about to start exporting to Asia (but built in California).

 The Model S is pricey.  But that is reasonable to expect from a radically new product.  The first Tesla product, the roadster, was relatively more expensive, since it was a simpler and a less luxuriously finished machine.  It received a great deal of attention, not only because of its energy saving, but also because if its performance, its striking appearance, and perhaps because only 1000 of them were made.  The model S will be followed by the model X, which will be a crossover (a combination of a sports sedan and a minivan) built on the same platform with the same performance. Following that the company plans to release what they call Generation 3, which is targeted to cost approximately half of the price of the Model S, and be aimed for mass market sales—one of Tesla’s original goals.  Musk promises that it will be consistent with the Model S —a unique, advanced, and exciting machine with no desire for gasoline.

 Say what you will, but in only ten years, Tesla has produced two sensational automobiles, is producing electric drive trains for other manufacturers (Daimler and Toyota), and has changed the attitude of many doubters of the attractiveness and desirability of electrically powered cars.  And it has done so through undeniably high quality products.

 

 

 

War and the Products of Industry

The last few posts I have written have been on this topic. I veered in this direction because I do not think that people think hard enough about the tremendous impact that Defense Department activities have on not only products for the military, but on civilian products and the overall economy. 

 But considering the military side, it seems to me that an interesting thing has happened, in that the availability of consistent and high funding over many years has resulted in technology and resulting products that have invalidated the classic western Clauswitz theory of total war —massive armies and navies slugging it out as in World War II.  So-called weapons of mass destruction (nuclear bombs, bio-chemical weapons) have made the potential cost in property and lives of civilian as well as members of the military ridiculously high on both sides of any conflict in which they are used.  It is possible to make treaties banning their use in conflicts between nations, but there is always a risk of desperate usage by dictatorial governments or fanatics under attack.

 Wars (or “police actions”) in which the U.S. has been involved since World War II have remained limited, and have not result in the hoped for “victories”.  And they have often veered toward more eastern theory of wars (read Sun Tsu), which recognize the effectiveness of such things as surprise (Pearl Harbor), ambush,  deception, patience (Mao and Ho Chi Minh}, and avoiding un-winnable battles.  And the nature of battle itself has been drastically changed by the use of air, modern transportation and communication, night vision capability, improved personal arms and armor, observation satellites, computers, and the global positioning satellite system.

 And in the U.S., at least, there is a growing antipathy toward what is euphemistically called collateral damage, as well as military casualties, and it is about time, since the civilian casualty count in modern wars is often larger than that of the military, and the civilians are in a sense innocent by-standers.  The present uproar about drone attacks, in which relatively few people are killed is a symptom of this antipathy.  Though the casualties are relatively few, they seem to violate our sense of fairness.  They are the opposite of Gary Cooper and the one-on-one duel in the classic movie High Noon.

 I certainly do not claim to know the answer to this.  The Cold War period was a period of relative peace, but high anxiety.  I understand the desire of nations to possess nuclear weapons, since for better or worse, they definitely help in becoming recognized as a power to be reckoned with (North Korea?).  The League of Nations failed, and the U.N. and the world court seem to have only limited power.  And leaders of nations, even though they deny it, seem to like to fight. Do we need a new type of war?   Now there is an opportunity for creativity.    

Product Quality, Military Influence, and Products of War

  If you did not instantly recognize it, the photo is of an AK 47 assault rifle.  More of them have been produced in the world than all other assault rifles combined.  Is it a good product, or a bad product?  It must have some advantages, and in fact is reliable, easily manufactured, cheap, effective, easy to acquire in many (most?) countries, and symbolic of revolution. It does not instantly impress one as being beautifully made and precise. It is designed to kill people in combat, not for hunting deer or target shooting.  That alone might cause  many people to consider it a bad product.  To a Taliban soldier, that might cause it to be thought a good product.  Many people would prefer not to think about this issue too hard, or perhaps I should say that the issue is too hard for many people to think about.  And assault rifles have rightly become symbolic in the argument about civilian gun ownership.

 I am always amazed at how many people prefer not to think deeply about war and technology.  We humans have apparently had wars through all of recorded history, technology and industry have certainly been a large factor during the past few hundred years, and wars are interesting because people act in totally illogical ways— for instance allowing themselves to be brutalized by drill sergeants and volunteering to act in ways in which the probability of being killed is very high.  And as president Eisenhower warned many years ago, the U.S. does probably have an industrial-military complex.

 As an example of this avoidance, I was once president of a museum start-up intended to celebrate the technological accomplishments of Silicon Valley.  The board consisted of a number of high level industry and political people.  The industry people were in general from electronics companies, and often founders. To my amazement, the board refused to consider members from businesses such as Lockheed Missiles and Space, F.M.C., Raytheon, and other powerful and successful companies that were primarily working on military products.  Even though located in Silicon Valley, apparently they weren’t part of the club.  As another example, for most of my tenure at Stanford, over half of the research funding in the Engineering School has come from the Department of Defense—a fact that seldom shows up in PR documents, even though none of the work is directly on weapons. We  don’t brag that our research activities are heavily dependent on DOD. 

 This is very weird, because in my memory, the U.S. is often involved in war. And we are proud of our industrial ability to help us do so (we remember that in the four years we were involved in World War II we manufactured over 300,000 military airplanes).  But we are ambivalent.  Even though the War Department was re-named the Department of Defense after World War II, we have only been actually attacked by one nation (Japan) in my memory, and have entered  conflicts in other countries many times.  But I’ll bet we are not going to re-name the Department of Defense the Department of Offense. 

 We like to think of ourselves as a peace-loving people, but are we?  The Defense Department budget is unclear at this point because of sequester cuts, but it is certainly above $650 billion dollars, and that does not include development and support of nuclear weapons (in the Department of Energy), the Veteran’s Administration, and other war-related costs.  In terms of battle fleet tonnage, the U.S. navy is larger than the next 13 navies combined, and as I remember, 11 of  these we consider to be our allies.

 Our “civilian” products are certainly influenced —and sometimes originated—by the military.  After all, it has brought us the internet —initially the ARPA net.  It brought us and maintains the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system.  It backed the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, and the Computer (the one at the Institute of Advanced Studies headed by John Von Neuman needed originally to simulate such things as the explosion of the hydrogen bomb}.  It was a powerful lobby for space exploration, and brought us the Boeing 707 (evolved from a prototype for the very successful aerial refueling tanker called the KC 135).

 At a perhaps lower level, think of such things as clothing (cargo pants, epaulets on overcoats, camouflage), toys (guns, miniature vehicles, models), and entertainment (war movies and books, computer games, paint ball, air-soft weapons).  And I find it interesting that now we label  well-meaning movements as wars (war on drugs, war on poverty, war on cancer).  I clearly remember that when I arrived at Stanford, women active in the feminist movement seemed to prefer fatigues and other military clothing.

 For the next few posts I am going to say some things about the influence of war and the military on industrial products and try to talk a bit about what quality means when applied to products intended for war.  I am certainly not pro-war, since it is a nasty business.  I did serve happily in the U.S. Air Force, but admit partly to avoid being drafted into the army.  But I recognize war as something humans have always done.

 I became so bothered by the  ability that most of us have to avoid thinking deeply about war that in the 1970’s I began teaching a course entitled War and Technology, which among other topics covered the historic eager support of technology by the military, which has resulted in developments such as nuclear weapons, chemical and biological agents, and remote weapons such as drones, which may in turn have lead us to the point where wars may no longer work as an mechanism to settle international, or even internal disputes.  Since it was perhaps my favorite course, I will throw in a tiny bit of history as we go.  And as I used to tell my students, don't let your political beliefs get in the way.  We are what we are.

 

 

 

 

 

An Outstanding Product – the Porsche 911

The first Porsche model 911 was sold in 1963.  Although it has been upgraded many times, and the model number internal to the Porsche company has changed several times, it is still sold as the model 911.  The photographs show the 1963 model and the 2013 model and  illustrate the slow and steady change of something that Porsche had gotten right in the beginning. Over 800.000 of the model 911 have been sold, The 911 is discussed on the automobile page of the May 26 New York Times, in an article entitled "Timeless, but Not Frozen in Time”  It is here.  you want more history, click here for the Wikipedia page. 

I drove a 1959 model 356A Porsche for 20 years, and loved it, although it had some shortcomings.  It was a souped up and more luxurious Volkswagen Beetle, and inherited the Volkswagen swing-axle suspension, which could become a bit scary at times.  The engine had been modified to include aluminum cylinders and pistons, which wore enough to produce an unacceptable amount of piston slap (I replaced them with iron) . I never made the switch to the 911 because of burgeoning family and possessions, but the 356 was sure fun, and I have from time to time admired the 911.  My older son had a 911 for a while, and now has my old 356.

The reason I admire this car is the success of the original one followed by a slow progression of changes which has allowed it to retain its position for 50 years.  The original 911 was a much better car of its type (sports car) than was the 356, which was in turn considered outstanding if compared to its competition in its early days.  The 911 had a much improved suspension, a 6 cylinder rear mounted air-cooled engine designed for the job, and other improvements, although it obviously was a descendent of the 356.  Since that time it has become a bit larger, a bit heavier, and “modernized” to include many features that continually improve its performance and satisfy the modern-day customer. Some features have been lost (air cooled engine), but it still retains its unique personality and its 6 cylinder flat rear mounted engine.

I cannot help but be impressed by an automobile that has been a leader in its class for 50 years and retained as much of its identity and appeal.  Many other sports cars available in 1963 are no longer manufactured.  The Corvette was around then, and is certainly still available, but has never quite been considered a sports car.  It  goes fast, but never has had the charisma or agility of the Porsche.  When I bought the model 356, it was considered by many to be the best sports car available within the reach of people like me (aerospace engineer).  It still has that reputation among enough people to maintain its mystique.  A tribute to Ferdinand Porsche and the often admired “German Engineering”.

 

Product Quality and Service

Are you ever impressed at how few people seem to work in “big box” stores?  I was at one time entertained by Home Depot ads that featured mellow older clerks who were expert in some field of building (plumbing, wiring, framing, etc) and who would be pictured patiently explaining the process to less expert customers.  I would like to find a big box store like that.  In many, one is lucky to run down any employee in the store, and if one succeeds, there are usually several people trying to get their attention, and one is lucky if they even know where things are, much less how to use them.

 I often meet people, who having heard about the service sector domination of the economy (it is estimated that 70% of all wage earners work in the service sector, as opposed to manufacturing or such things as agriculture, fishing, and mining) wonder why “service” is so lousy in the U.S.  My wife happily quotes a comment she read at some time, that in England service is a tradition, in Japan it is an honor, and in the U.S. it is an insult. But such comments and reactions are based on the belief that service is about helping ordinary people through the day, not running a derivatives firm on Wall Street.

 I have an unabridged Webster dictionary, which I love.  It has two thousand and some pages of very fine print (three columns per page, ten words per line in each column), and I love it partly because of the amazing amount of effort that had to go into compiling it.  But also, because it contains the common meanings of words, and these days we seem to be happily trying to re-define words to fit our contemporary needs. This dictionary contains almost two columns under service, and almost 50 definitions.  The definitions in the first half column do in fact refer to people helping people.  Only in the middle does one come across such things as “useful labor that does not produce a tangible commodity”.  Here we move into the economic realm.  But I think most people consider service to be help from other people, whether it be in person, in manuals, on the internet, or whatever.  And I agree we could do much better.

 Without help, we tend to buy the cheapest product, which may be of the lowest quality.  I notice when I shop for tools with a friend who has spent his life as a mechanic, I spend more money and get better stuff. I no longer buy the cheapest house paint, because I don’t like to paint the house that often.  The internet is becoming less trustworthy as it becomes more commercial, so I have switched to asking house-painters about paint quality.  It would be better if I could trust sales people in paint stores to give me the straight poop.  Somehow they are all convinced that their paint is the best.  I bought a combination (always risky) toaster oven-toaster a while ago and it is a disaster, even though the sales person raved about it.  In retrospect, he probably wanted me to buy it and knew nothing about it.

 Higher quality requires more informed and honest information about products.  It doesn’t have to come from personal contact, but personal contact is nice, and would make a lot of jobs.

Product Quality, Technical Progress, Obsolescence, and Digital Devices

A few weeks ago, the DVD player on our “home entertainment” center failed.  Looking up the symptoms of that particular device on the internet, I found the recommendation that I take the cover off and start the disc spinning with my finger.  It worked. Problem solved, perhaps, except more recently my wife realized that her friends did not have to start their DVD’s with their finger, so I set forth to replace the unit, shown above (note amazing waste space)

 DVD players cost very little these days, thanks to the intrusion of Blu-Ray players, and even the price of Blu-Rray players is dropping rapidly, and to boot they routinely offer compatibility with Wi-FI and such streaming sites as NetFlix, so I bought a relatively low priced one.  But I neglected to examine the display sample in the store – A MISTAKE.  The back of it was naked except for sockets for an HDMI and a USB cable.  Nothing for digital audio.

 Like many (most of my friends) I run the audio from various devices into a mature receiver and thence to a number of speakers that my kids have cast off, thereby creating some sort of surround sound.  The receiver I have is pre-HDMI and I love it (once again like most of my friends).  Being ignorant of HDMI cables, but being an engineer, I figured it would be simple to run the HDMI cable to my newer television, and strip off the audio to my receiver.  In fact, that is exactly what I had done with my old system, by running component cables to the TV and audio cables to the receiver.  But then I went back to the internet to figure out how to do this, and found two things:  HDMI cables have 19 wires in them (not five) and they are not made to be separated, and the internet is full of angry people facing the same problem I had—integrating new and slightly old equipment.

 I took the blu-ray back to Fry’s, a large electronic store in our area, and asked the person I had dealt with what to do.  Obvious, said he, buy a new receiver and a new set of components all wired for HDMI.  Wrong, said I, and bought a low-cost blu-ray player that took not only an HDMI cable, and a bunch of others I did not want, but also a coaxial audio output, fortunately matching a similar input on my receiver—so a temporary victory.

 But while in the store I looked at the backs of all the blu-ray players they had, and found absolutely no standardization at all.  They all had HDMI sockets, but seemed to have random numbers of RCA sockets, optical sound ports, ether net ports, USB ports, and even an S-video socket or two.  Is this perhaps an unconscious (or conscious) attempt to confuse the consumer so that he/she will buy new equipment, most of which is wired for HDMI?  An attempt to apply a subtle form of voluntary obsolescence?  Or are all the venders thinking that their layout is superior?

 Can’t there be standardization in such things as blu-ray players, or is that too much of an impediment to innovation? In fact, this very lack of standardization is a very successful strategy to make people like me increasingly angry at the manufacturers of these no-longer-magic devices. In the future I may buy old equipment from Goodwill.  Like many people I carry grudges like inconvenient cable changes a long time, such as the one I have against Apple for changing projector plugs. 

 But I am temporarily happy with my new blu-ray player plugged into my old sound system, except or course for the fact that the manual control buttons are invisible and barely findable with the fingers (remotes always get sat upon or lost between couch pillows), and my attempts to enter my new player into my “universal” remote have so-far come to naught. I will keep  trying, but if I cannot solve that problem, I will go back to playing the piano.

 

 

Baby Products and Product Quality

The first photo is of two of my grand daughters being pushed around by their very pleased grandmother.  The vehicle in which they are riding is called a jogger, specifically designed for parents who run, and is a wonder of technology.  The second photo shows its Indianapolis 500 personality,  The kids will clearly become race drivers, and I have already requested the vehicle when they are done with it so I can install the proper engine. It is a large device, but can be collapsed onto its frame (providing one knows the proper controls to do so –it helps to be an engineer) to fit into a car (the larger the better). All in all it is an impressive device. It is comfortable, smoothly running, complete with convertible top, seat belts, water bottle and miscellaneous equipment holders, rugged, and light weight for its size. The photo on the left below shows one of its brakes (?) and its general high quality of craftsmanship. The frame is almost bicycle like in appearance.

  I am almost ashamed to include the photo on the right, which shows me at the age of 5 months in my stroller.  No spoke wheels, no bright colors, no comfortable seat, no roof, no brakes, no seat belts—it wasn’t even very big.  I didn’t understand what a deprived childhood I had.  Mothers and fathers could not jog very rapidly with this machine.   Fortunately that was not a problem, because when I was a baby, any adult seen running for exercise would have been suspected  of fleeing the scene of a crime they had committed. 

 But wait!  My stroller had a tray that would hold small toys and beads to push around, and a handle I could pretend I was steering with.  I could either sit or stand in it, and the foot plate could be removed when I became larger so that it became a “walker”.  In fact, eventually the front wheels could be replaced with a steerable single wheel, the enclosure could be removed, and I had a tricycle I could kick around with my feet.  It had rubber-coated bumpers and was a combination stroller and play pen.  It was light in weight, low in cost, sturdy, and with a single obvious fold of the handle, extremely portable.  And since I was unable to get into trouble inside it at an early age, I required less monitoring.  Maybe some things have been lost over time.

 In a post some time ago, I complained about the inexorable growth of pick-up trucks.  Baby equipment shows the same tendency.  Strollers are approaching golf carts in size and car seats approaching the size of the seats already in the automobile.  Meanwhile in the recent past automobiles have approached vans in size and vans have approached busses, perhaps partly to haul this equipment around.  There are some signs of reversal in this, as smaller efficient cars are now in vogue, and perhaps baby equipment will follow the trend, But over long periods of time we seem to think that generally bigger is always better, except for digital devices.  I am not convinced. Bigger seems to be often accompanied by higher cost, more unnecessary features, more difficulty in operation, and the need for more space and materials. 

 But perhaps if baby equipment continues to grow, there will be a backlash because parents will have increasing difficulty finding their babies in the midst of their equipment, and require trailers to haul it around with their smaller more efficient automobiles.

 

 

 

 

 

The Oxy-Acetylene Tank Set—A Good Product

The  photo shows my now classic middle-sized gas welding equipment.  Big enough to cover my needs, but also small enough to lift into the back of my pick-up.  It consists of the usual — Victor torch with cutting head and heating and welding tips, hose, tanks of oxygen and of acetylene, pressure regulators, and assorted related stuff (goggles, torch cleaning tips, spark igniter, cart, etc.) The equipment is sometimes loosely called a tank set.  I recommend that all households have one.

I use it not only for welding, brazing, and soldering, but also for a broad range of usages requiring controlled heat.  I have even occasionally used it to reheat my coffee on cold days when I am working out of doors.

The rusty mechanism on the table next to it on the old wagon is part of a very vintage McCormick Reaper (the one in the  history books) that I am restoring.  It is a crucial part, since it contains the shaft that rotates the arms that sweep the grain into the cutter and then onto the ground, and all sorts of pivoting parts that allow the arms to move up and down as they swing. The reaper is probably 130 years old, and has spent a good bit of that time outside, so when I acquired it the shaft had rusted quite firmly to the castings in which they turn.  I soaked the whole mess first in penetrating oil, then in old diesel oil, and even in used brake fluid, but the parts remained rusted together.  So I used the ultimate answer in such cases, which is to heat the castings red hot with my torch.  Since heat weakens rust and expands holes, the rust gave up with the result that the shaft now rotates happily and the arms go through their motion.  One of many uses for my tank set .

 The tank set qualifies as a very good product according to the criteria in my Good Products Bad Products book.  Costs are low for the capability it gives me, and it has never failed to do what I want it to do.  It is easy to use and fits me well, is nicely made, and fills me with positive emotions, ranging from nostalgia to an instant sense of accomplishment whenever I use it.  It is elegant in its simplicity, and lets me mingle with the welding culture. Environment?  One generally uses a so-called neutral flame (no particulates) with this device, I am stingy in my  use of acetylene, and I don’t use it that often.  It certainly is not in the league of my furnace, water heater, or gas stove.

 Also it is fun to weld.  It never ceases to amaze me how easy to turn two pieces of metal into one with a simple flame. I must admit I generally use electrical equipment to weld these days, since it is fast, more easily controlled, and allows one to avoid oxidation by using an inert gas.  But welding with a gas flame strikes me as a somehow purer experience. It's just me and the fire!

 

 

 

 

A Product I Hate

One of the reasons I hate to shop for groceries, aside from the ever-increasing size of grocery stores which makes it increasingly difficult to find what I want, and the profusion of marketing, “deals”, and other would-be enticements to buy things I don’t want, are the toilet paper style produce bags, available in either  low mount or high mount as seen in the photographs.  They are shown in their at-rest position, just waiting to anger the innocent.

  Like old toilet paper rollers, these devices are capable, (especially if low on bags), of not only unrolling more bags than desired, but of actually leaving their housing to festoon the bags across the floor.  The bags themselves are difficult to properly tear off the roll, confusing as to which way is “up”, and challenging indeed to open so that the payload can be inserted.

The photographs below give a hint of this, but you have probably experienced the frustration of trying to use them many times yourself.  If not, I would appreciate knowing where you shop. 

The first photo shows the bags lying flat (notice lack of marking where you tear them apart).The bags are folded in a strange  manner, and the next photo shows what you see as you try to figure out how to open one.  The photo after that is an indication of the opening when/if you succeed.  How about trying to put a head of lettuce into that confusion of thinner than tissue plastic.  And even if you do succeed in opening it, the next photo of the bottom of the fully open bag shows that they are diabolically designed so that the bottom is not obvious.

They are not only functionally a nightmare, they have a sleazy feel, an ugly look, and despite the optimistic note encouraging returning them to the store, probably are not very favorable to the ecology.  Also they are so thin that I have a few times succeeded in dropping a purchase through the bottom, which is non-relaxing to other shoppers.

 As a positive, they result in the opportunity to meet nice people.  I usually shop during the day, when many of the other shoppers seem to be mothers with children who would rather be somewhere else.  Today, I got to know a nice lady who had an unhappy child in a stroller and was carrying a baby who was having a temporary meltdown.  How about trying to open one of these bags and put produce in it with one hand while trying to calm down a couple of unhappy kids?  I  helped her with the bags (not the kids) and she was so obviously grateful that it alleviated the anger I had accrued from my own previous bag experience.

Another good piece of news is shown in the last photograph (apple by mirror).  Upon reaching home and emptying one of said bags I found that I had won an apple with three of the pesky little labels that you have to either swallow, spit out,  or peel off.  Wow!  Must have been because I am a member of the Safeway club.

 

The Stanford University 2013 Good Products Bad Products Course

January 8^th, 2013, is the first day of the winter quarter Good Products, Bad Products course (ME 214, 314) at Stanford University.  I began this course in the 1980’s, and it has gone through several changes in name, course number, and department base since then.   David Beach has been teaching it since I retired in 1999, and has changed it in many ways, although he has kept the intent of the course the same.  He has continued to use my notes, and now that they have been published as a book, he is using it as a text in the course.  Although it is listed as a graduate course in the school of engineering, it will include students from other parts of the campus as well.  The majority of the class will consist of regular Stanford students, although there will be some part-time students who will be taking it remotely over the internet. 

 Classes will include a number of guest speakers representing companies and individuals concerned with and producing high quality products, lectures from David Beach, and discussions of the reading material, the speakers, and whatever other product-quality related concerns arise during the quarter. They will not only be reading and discussing my book, but will be  doing exercises similar to the ones listed at the end of the chapters.  They will write short papers on each, and I will talk about them and include some of the more interesting ones on this blog. I will attach a rough schedule to my next post to give  you an idea of what occurs in each class meeting.

The course concludes with a series of consistently impressive presentations on the material in my book.  Groups of students select the topic areas, do appropriate research, and being a bright and talented bunch with a love of media, come up with presentations that are entertaining as well as educational.  I obviously cannot deliver the entire course in a  blog to those of you reading my posts, but not taking the course.  But I will keep you in touch with the course, forward student work when appropriate and interesting to you, and in doing so hopefully expose you a bit to the thinking of present day Stanford students.  I will also continue to write posts on aspects of product quality design and manufacturing, and other topics not covered in the course.  Please comment  on my course-related posts, and I will forward the comments to the class, should they fit the activities that are under way.  The more diversity in input to the students, the better, and any comments you make should result in lively discussions.

Although I have been retired from active teaching for many years, I continue to occupy an office on campus, drink the coffee,  and heckle the people who continue to do the work.  I still find the opening of winter quarter to be exciting.  Although California weather is hard to complain about, it becomes a bit wetter in the San Francisco area, and the general energy level of the academic enterprise picks up a bit because it is not as much fun to go out and play. Hopefully I can convey a bit of this to you.

Welcome aboard!

New Year's Resolution for People Making Industrial Products

I resolve to do what I can to improve the product I am working on —in fact to strive to help it become the best of its kind in the world—or if I think it is already is the best of its kind in the world, to work on improving it anyway, because someone is close behind.

 In doing so, I resolve to consider not only the more easily measurable aspects of quality discussed by David Garvin in his now classic November 1987 HBR article (performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability) but also the more qualitative aspects covered in the Adams Good Products Bad Products book (perceived performance, performance/cost ratio, craftsmanship, consistency with human users and cultural values, aesthetic issues,  sensitivity to finite resources and the environment, and finally emotional appeal. (Garvin did mention aesthetics and perceived quality in his article, which was entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality, but brushed over them as being functions of individual judgment—Adams says hooray for individual judgment).

 Finally I resolve to remain aware of the two cultures (the scientific and humanistic) mentioned in the Adams People and Products post of  Nov 1, 2012, and to the extent that I have a bias, for instance, toward quantitative reasoning and logic (which are good)  and away from aesthetics and feelings (which are not only good but powerfully affect people’s judgment of quality), or vice versa,  I will do my best to get over it.

Baling (farm/soft/hay/tie/re-bar) Wire — A Wonderful Product

I have some large equipment on a friend’s farm that I cover with plastic tarpaulins, usually held down with sisal cord.  But this year a heavy windstorm broke many of the cords, so I spent yesterday replacing them with baling wire, and in the process, realized I have spent most of my life working with baling wire.  In fact, one of the first jobs I can remember in my life was straightening baling wire for my grandfather, who had talked the local dairy into saving it for him, and used it for every purpose from fastening broken objects together and holding up mufflers and exhaust pipes to tearing down spider webs and making bizarre constructions to unclog drains.  I studied  under him!

 Baling wire is made of steel that is high enough in carbon to be strong, but has been annealed so that it is easy to bend.  It comes in many sizes, and many lengths, and although sometimes plated, it is usually black in color and lightly oiled. In an urban area it is best known as re-bar or tie wire, and a major use is to tie together reinforcing bars while concrete is poured over them. This photo shows a small quantity purchased from Home Depot.  It is still used to hold bales together in agricultural areas, although it has generally been replaced with plastic cord.  I don’t bale hay, and don’t pour concrete that often, but I can’t imagine living without it.  I have a lot of sophisticated tools and adhesives, but bailing wire is the most flexible of them all.  And even though it is possible to purchase fancy devices to twist it together and otherwise form it, all you need to use it is a pair of pliers (lineman pliers are a luxury), or if such a thing is not available, you can often get by with your bare hands.

 It has been around in for a couple of hundred years, although it first became plentiful in the late 19^th century with the invention of the hay-baler.  The photograph  below shows part of the clutch lever on a large 100 year old track-laying tractor that I have owned for 40 years.  It was clearly starting to crack at the point where the pivot hole for the rod leading to the clutch was drilled, and the natural solution by the original owner was to fasten a large nail to the lever with, of course, baling wire.  The tractor was a basket case when I acquired it, and I dutifully restored it, but no-way was I about to weld the crack on the lever and remove this typical farm- type repair.

  In fact, baling wire was so prevalent on farms that produced or used large amounts of hay, that in many cases it became somewhat of a hazard because of its ability to poke holes in things (including human flesh), and if wadded up and discarded in quantity, to form indestructible tangles (you’ve heard the term haywired?).  But the good news, was (and is) its easy availability to solve endless problems.  In fact, I remember encountering a saying when a kid, that it was possible to repair anything with baling wire and spit. 

 In my book, anything that performs as many functions in an unchanged form for 200 years and is cheap and easily available is a wonderful product.

 Finally, the right team won the Rose Bowl.  Happy New Year.

Product Quality and Balance

Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote a poem entitled “The One Hoss Shay”, that still is referenced by people associated with product design and development.  It is about a mythical vehicle that is so well designed and crafted that it lasts 100 years without failing in any way, and then completely collapses as all of the parts simultaneously reach the end of their life span.  If you want to read it, look here.

 More of such balance in reliability and durability would be nice in modern products.  Many products are annoying because some parts fail much earlier and more often than others, until finally these parts are no longer available and the whole product is junked.

  But there is another type of balance, having more to do with quality.  The photo is of my wife Marian in her 2004 Acura TSX, leaving early in the morning to control the world.  We bought the car new to make up for a beloved Honda CRX that she drove for 18 years, until an evil person roared out of a driveway and destroyed it. She didn’t want a big car, needed to drive grand-kids and friends around, likes nimble and responsive cars, and at times can be a mild hot-rodder.  The TSX is neither the fastest, the most beautiful, the most luxurious, the roomiest, or the best handling automobile available, but it is pretty good on all fronts. She has loved it absolutely for eight years. For her (and actually for me) it is an extraordinary blend. It is based on the so-called European Accord body (a bit smaller than the Accord sold in the U.S.)  It has front wheel drive and the engine produces about 200 horsepower and is easy on fuel.  It goes faster than either of us needs it to and is fitted with plenty of digital gadgets—Navigation system, climate control, sound system— but not so many that we will die messing with them while driving (a friend of mine has ceded the driving to his wife while he attends to the much more elaborate navigation system, the cell phones, the doors and windows, the TV, the climate control and sound system, and so on.) The TSX is also clearly a product of Honda, and we have always liked such things.

 I spoke of David Garvin’s now classic article in the Nov 1, 1987 Harvard Business Review, entitled “Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality” in my post of  Nov. 1, 2012. The dimensions he discusses are performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. The TSX gets high grades on all of them.  In my book Good Products, Bad Products, I discuss performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, emotional response, aesthetics, cultural fit, and global fit.  The TSX also gets high grades on all of them.

 In the design, development, and marketing of many products, we often tend to emphasize only a few components of quality.  These days we are excited about digital control.  I just bought a new dishwasher.  Since the old one failed in its rather complicated control circuitry, and since I couldn’t find replacement parts that I considered reasonably priced, I bought a new one with the fewest cycles and options I could find.  I finally found one with only(?) five possible cycles, three options, a delay, and a large row of warning lights.  Of course, we only use the “normal” button.  The dishwasher will probably fail because of the circuitry necessary to allow it to do something we don’t ever use.  As people used to say when I worked at the Jet Propulstion Lab, “Reliability is fewer parts”—that's electrical as well as mechanical.

 Good Products should rate high in all components of quality—just like the One Hoss Shay did in reliability and durability.

 

 

Metropolitan Opera HD Simulcasts - an outstanding product

I have always occasionally listened to an opera recording at home, and have seen a few operas live, but never considered myself an opera fan.  I never much liked sopranos and was not thrilled by the traffic, the cost, and the crowds involved with live opera, and could hardly believe that people actually sat through Wagner’s Ring cycle, a couple of the operas being some five hours long.  But I must admit I did not sit very close to the stage.  In fact, one might say I occupied the cheap seats.

Two years ago some friends of ours suggested that my wife and I attend one of the New York Met Simulcasts , and now I am an extreme opera fan.  Purist friends of mine claim that these simulcasts cannot compare with being at a live production, but maybe there is an analogy between being at a live football game and watching one televised with high definition onto a huge screen with outstanding sound, except met simulcasts are not interrupted by commercials, action is continuous, and the camera work and sound are to my mind far superior to those bringing you football games.  Also, the subtitles are superior to haranguing football announcers, and the behind the scenes interviews and insights into the productions are wonderful.  There is something to be said for live events, but also a great deal to be said for these simulcasts.

 To mention a few related advantages, the theater where we watch these is only a couple miles from our home, parking is plentiful and free a hundred feet from the entrance, seats are large and comfortable with immense leg room and arms with cup holders, everything from popcorn to ice cream and coffee are available in the lobby, and extreme informality in clothing is welcomed.  Finally, tickets are $20 or so. In my personal opinion these productions are much superior to the cheap seats at live performances.

 What have I learned?  Opera performers are incredible actors if watched up close, modern technology and huge screens do justice to the productions, and the subtitles and information that are available at the productions make operas easy to follow.  I am now most fond of Wagner’s Ring cycle, and I now like sopranos.  Finally, the productions do an excellent job of humanizing the performers and give insight into the impressive staging required. 

 To me, these simulcast performances are a use of technology I have difficulty criticizing (a  unique experience for me).  I often curse my computer, sometimes my car and leaky toilets, and always automobile traffic, but never these performances.  To me they are miracles worth far more than $20, and I cry when the hero/heroine dies—which is usually.   

 

Good Can Opener, Bad Can Opener

The photo shows two can openers that live in my kitchen,  One is an electric model designed by Michael Graves (a very famous designer) as part of a line of kitchen utensils for Target and manufactured by Black and Decker, the one in the foreground is a traditional hand operated one made by Norpro.  The Michael Graves design has a sleek, sophisticated shape,  is easy to clean (the cutting unit slips off and into the dish washer),  and has a cute/humorous look about it (note pink and blue knobs).  My wife loves it, and in fact has our kitchen liberally equipped with Michael Graves designed utensils,   The Norpro one is a mechanism that has been around for many years, now outfitted with larger, easier to use handles.  I would describe the Graves can opener as a delight to have on one’s sink, and the Norpro one as an honest and perhaps brutally functional design.

But, the Norpro device opens cans beautifully, and the Graves machine does not.  The Norpro version allows one to clamp the rim of the can tightly between the blade and the serrated drive wheel as the blade does its work.  The blade rotates along with the drive wheel, helping the process and delivering a rotary cut.  The Graves version requires that the can be held rather skillfully against a stop as the smaller drive wheel drives the can against a stationary blade.  My wife has learned the necessary skill to hold the can in exactly the proper position in the Graves can opener so that the can will behave.  I have not learned the necessary skill, and have to put up with re-starting the cut several times as the can is rejected, hopefully into my hand rather than onto the floor.

To me, two great lessons are apparent from these two can openers.  The first has to do with the power of the more emotional aspects of product quality discussed in my Good Products, Bad Products book.  For my wife, these are more important than the crummy can opening job the Graves model does.  The second is that good performance should be required before a product can be called good.  Designers are often justifyingly criticized for exciting and beautiful products that don’t do their job well.  For me, the Norpro can opener does its job so well in comparison with the Graves can opener that it is an excellent product, independently of its lack of sophisticated form.  Furthermore, the Norpro model costs less and has fewer parts to break.—and it opens bottles to boot.

Finally, why do we need electric can openers?  Years ago, cans were heavily used to preserve and distribute food, but now we have gone toward plastic containers and packages,  frozen food,  and rapidly delivered fresh food.  We use much less canned food than we used to, so the can opener does not see nearly as much service.  The hand-operated device can easily be dropped into a drawer when not used, dropped as a unit into the dish washer, and does not require an outlet plug or use electrical energy (not that energy for electric can openers ranks high among global problems).

 I have an old electric lunch box in my office.  It is made of aluminum and shaped like a standard lunch box, except it has a heating element in the base and an electric cord coiled in a compartment.  Above the heating compartment is a chamber with a lid to heat soup or other hot food, and a small surface to make toast or grill a sandwich.  I show it to people because most of them have never seen such a thing, and it invariably makes them laugh, because it seems like a foolish thing.  But I don’t think it is as foolish as an electric can opener.

C.P. Snow, the Two Cultures, and Product Quality

C.P. Snow, a scientist turned novelist, is remembered partly for a talk he gave (the Rede Lecture of 1959 ) entititled "The Two Cultures", in which he made the point that the intellectual life of western society was split into two cultures, the humanistic and the scientific, and that this hindered our ability to solve many problems. This was followed  by a widely read book of the same title. I talked about this in my post of 07/29/2012.

 From my experience in industry and in academia, the issue is very much alive.  The illustration by Matt Collins is from a column by Lawrence Kraus in the 07/29/2009 Scientific American, which celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Snow’s Rede Lecture. His column can easily be applied to the present election campaigns. I am personally a believer in Snow's thesis, and since I enjoy both of these cultures, I have been often frustrated by people’s tendency to join one and criticize the other.

 The outlooks of both cultures are necessary to secure high product quality.  In a classic article entitled Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality in the November 1987 Harvard Business Review, David Garvin discussed the topic of product quality, and then listed the following necessary elements— Performance, Features, Reliability, Conformance, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality.  This was a time when U.S. industry had spent great effort on, and achieved great success in radically improving the quality of its products, spurred on by Japanese competition and the realization that improved quality led not only to added value, but decreased costs.

 But although recognizing the importance of the final two elements, Garver did not emphasize them as hard as the others, because as he explained, he felt that judgment was not as universal in the case of aesthetics, and intangibles, such as advertising and brand names, influenced the customer"s perception of quality. The first six of his topics are  easier to quantify, and be handled in a more scientific way (measured), but aesthetics and perceived quality certainly play a large role in the decision process of the consumer. 

 When I wrote my Good Products Bad Products Book I suggested a number of elements that were perhaps more on the humanistic side than the scientific—perception of performance and cost, human fit, craftsmanship, overall emotional impact, aesthetics, elegance and sophistication, symbolism and cultural fit, and finally consistency with global limits ( a topic both scientific and humanistic).  I did so because I felt that they received less attention than they deserved in Industry, compared with the first six listed by David Garvin.

 Although both scientific (if you would technical and quantitative) thinking and humanistic thinking are required for high product quality, continual effort is necessary to cause such a thing to happen.  Even in the relatively large design activity in the Stanford Engineering school, where my office is located and where everyone would probably claim they support the merging of Snow’s two cultures, a walk around shows local areas where the  white boards are covered with equations, and others where they are covered with sketches and post-it notes—not many with both.  Much of the university, like much of the world, seems to tend to divide over mathematics.  A few years ago, the  Stanford Anthropology Department actually formally split into those who worshipped such things as probability and statistics, and those who did not.  Fortunately, it has now been put back together, and can resume arguing about which of two equally necessary approaches is more important.

 In many companies with which I am familiar, the split is even more apparent.

 

Good Products —the Joy of Stapling

This is my Arrow Heavy Duty T-50 Staple gun.  I have owned it for many years, and it must qualify as a classic as it is still being made.  Although powered staplers are available, they require wrestling with either pneumatic lines, electric cords, or discharged batteries, and I don’t need one, since I do not drive staples all day long.  This stapler drives staples ranging from l/4 to 9/16 inch long, and such staples are invaluable for doing things such as fastening fabric or screening to wood, fastening panels to frameworks,  and accomplishing other tasks in which nail and screw heads are too small.

 It definitely qualifies as a good product by the criteria in my Good Products, Bad Products book.  It is reasonably priced, seems to be highly reliable and long lived, since I have owned it many years and it has never failed me, bangs staples home with a vengeance, fits me very well,, is extremely well made, and is highly thought of in the culture of amateur, but capable builders and repair and maintenance people (of which I am a member). Although I am not aware that it is the Museum of Modern art in New  York, it is a clean and functional design, and its unusually bright plating allows it to be easily found if its owner has a shop in which tools hang on nails, but usually do not return to the nails which they have previously occupied (me again). The stapler is easily understood, simple to load and use (no video or confusing manual required), mechanically elegant, and gentle on the environment.

 And I have come to love it.  I have an open barn, which as well as holding a great deal of wonderful objects my wife categorizes as junk, also contains a sprinkling of restored vehicles and other equipment and a few motorcycles and go-karts.  It seems to be very attractive to owls, especially in the rainy season.  I like owls, and they are nice to have in barns because rats and mice, who like to eat and use as nest materials such things as wiring harness insulation and seat cushions, stay away..  But owls are large animals, and they seem to have made the roof trusses in my barn into the official owl rest-room in the area.

 Owl poop is seriously awful, since it is sticks to everything, seems to be impervious to water and most common solvents, and when finally removed, takes a bit of paint with it.  So I decided to interfere with their pleasure by making it more difficult to roost on the truss members.  The barn is 20 feet high, but I have a friend who owns a large forklift that is capable of reaching a 15 foot height, so I spent a few hours happily standing in a fruit box on the forks stapling bird netting to the appropriate truss members while he  whirled me around the barn.  It was really fun.  The weather was perfect, the ride was exhilarating, and my stapler gave me the power to put the netting exactly where I wanted to.  I don’t know if I have won the battle, because  owls are indeed very wise, but I wouldn’t mind at all if I had to do more of the same.  Tools are to extend the capability of your body, and the stapler certainly did (of course the fork lift did also).  I would have looked pretty foolish trying to handle heavy sheets of netting 15 feet in the air while working a hammer or screw driver with one hand and holding nails or screws with the other.

But upon writing this post, I realize am also very fond of my Swingline model 747 desk stapler in this photo. I have also had it for many years, initially acquiring it for no cost after it was unclaimed after a large office move.  It too is reliable, long-lived, elegant in operation, humble but pleasing in appearance, easy to operate, and gentle on the environment. And it always responds and never argues with me.  In fact looking at this picture makes me realize that my desk is mostly covered by digital things that are always requiring and often frustrating.  The stapler simply sits there and responds beautifully to having paper stuffed into its mouth and being hit on the head.   I probably sometimes take out my frustration with my electronic equipment by hitting my stapler much harder than is needed, even though it is a most  faithful servant.

 

And looking at the photograph, I also notice a few paper clips on my desk—even simpler classic products that do their jobs beautifully.  And they are also useful for many other tasks, from cleaning fingernails to opening the spouts of old glue bottles.

 

 

Science, Technology, and Society — Electric Cars

  For some ten years, I chaired the STS (Science, Technology, and Society) program at Stanford University.  There are many such programs in Universities, usually struggling for money and recognition.  In the case of Stanford, it was not particularly loved by the Engineering School, partly because to study technology in a social setting is to become a bit critical of various aspects of it, and partly because the Engineering School prefers to spend its resources on producing professionals in their field, as do schools such as Medicine, Business, and Law. It seems  that in a society such as the U.S., people simply want to accept technology and science as good, and are not that interested in either their nature, or where they come from, especially if mathematics is involved.  When Jerry Weisner, an extraordinarily idealistic, bright, and politically connected man, was president of M.I.T., he attempted to start an entire STS school. Midst the political interests and overall lack of interest by Engineering and Science faculty members, he failed.  There are some faculty who teach and do research in the area at M.I.T, but not even a department, nor is there at Stanford.

 I  feel strongly that since the U.S. is so committed to science and technology,  general education should talk more about such things.  I wrote a book on the difference between science and technology some years ago (Flying Buttresses, Entropy, and O-Rings, published by Harvard Press), and I think it is a good book, but the sales have been relatively modest.  Many people would rather lump the two together as a field filled with people wearing pocket protectors and white coats, and in the case of success would just as soon give credits to “young scientists”, rather than learning about the processes involved.

 I was reminded of the STS issue by a relatively small article in the October 7  New York Times Magazine entitled Why Your Car Isn’t Electric, in which there are a few quotes from STS people.  The article is here.  STS people sometimes argue about whether science and technology are more socially determined (what people want), or technology determined (what is possible).  The answer is some of both.  Products must be technologically feasible, but also wanted by the society.  But directions of technology and science that are backed by lots of resources and demand win out, and become dominant as people get used to them and the infrastructure develops,  Did you know your refrigerator might be powered by gas, were it not for all the money that General Electric had long ago?  Those of you who are older might remember Servel.

 Automobiles are the topic of this article.  As is pointed out, the largest carmaker in the United States at the turn of the 20^th century was the Electrical Vehicle Company, which owned 30% of the electric cars in the county (it leased its cars) but was driven into bankruptcy by, as the article says, “a series of shady business dealings”.  This gave an opportunity to people building petroleum fueled vehicles, who then improved their products over the years, until they became the definition of “cars”.  Now it is very difficult to convince people to try other types of transportation.  As an example of extraordinary efforts, the article informed me (I am not a Prius owner) that the Prius creeps forward when one takes one’s foot off of the brake, a feature not necessary, but included so it feels like a “real” car.

 To me the nature of science and engineering and the forces that shape them is fascinating.  I encourage you to dive into such issues a bit more.  It may clarify questions such as whey are we making cities unusable at certain times of the day by clogging them with large petroleum-burning vehicles that are designed to go 70 miles per hour, but often can hardly move.  Also why we developed nuclear weapons to worry about, and why we are automating so many people out of jobs. 

 

 

 

 

Spacecraft and Cars

As the publicity says, the Curiosity Rover now on Mars (seen here from a Martian orbiter while descending under its parachute) is the size of a small car, about one ton, roughly comparable to a Mini Cooper.  (2,500 lbs).  But it is vastly more complicated, able to withstand the environment of launch from earth, and the entry and landing environments of Mars, as well as to operate with no maintenance through the three year or so lifetime of the flight (35 million miles) and surface operation.

Granted that although the environment of space used to frighten  designers of spacecraft, it is now seen as fairly benign, since we have learned to control temperatures, orient ourselves, and correct trajectories on route.  But the launch, entry, and landing present formidable problems in temperature control, structural design, communications, propulsion, and other areas to the designers of space craft, and the reliabily requirements are off the chart.  Also, there is intense competition for being able to fly an instrument on such spacecraft, and launch vehicles are limited, so weight is of extreme importance.  The Curiosity includes ten extremely complex scientific experiments in its weight, as well as the ability to move over unknown terrain, generate the necessar power,  and communicate with earth.

When  I worked at JPL, spacecraft were not nearly as complex, and often failed because we were just learning the game.  But even then, we used to wonder about what was with cars.  Why did they weigh 2 tons, when all they had to do was move down roads under human control?  Why all the structure?  It was certainly possible to make sufficiently stiff structure for much less weight  Why did they only last for 200,000 miles or so?  At 25  miles per hour,  that was only 8,000 hours.  The Voyager I. shown at the right , was launched 35 years ago (over 300,000 hours) has now traveled over 11 billion miles and is about to be the first object we have made to leave the solar system entirely.

Admittedly, once the Voyager left we humans, with  our ability to damage things, it has had a pretty easy ride, and electronics seem to be more reliable than mechanical device, but still……

In the Sept 9 2012 issue of the New York Times, there was a review by Lawrence Ulrich of the Chevrolet Spark, a small car designed, engineered, and built in Korea, which will be sold in the U .S. The reviewer heroically tried to be positive about the car, although he could not help calling it such things as a “demented toaster”, and describing it as a “squashed face carnival buggy”. But right after the review was an article entitled “Taking the ‘Cheap’ Out of the Small Car”.  Although the bias toward “big” (read heavy, “luxurious, ”over-powered, and canceling out the feel of the road) still showed, there were indications that car designers are finally closing with the problem of making more efficient and better designed transportation machines.  But it did make me wonder.  Where did we get this idea of and desire for “luxury” as it is defined in automobiles (and often expensive bordellos)?  Why did we decide we didn’t want to hear any noise or feel the road?  Why did we decide that we wanted driving to be as automatic as possible, rather than requiring more involvement of we drivers?  And finally, how did we get caught in our strange expectations about what transportation machines should be?

I am still hanging on to a  1975 Alfa Romeo and a !970 Jaguar E-Type that have been in the family a long time and which I am in the process of restoring.  They are not all that reliable by modern standards.  I certainly don’t drive them between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  And my wife’s Acura beats them as far as handling, speed, and yes, luxury, are concerned.  But  for most of my driving, they will be much more fun.  And as for weight, it has become increasingly critical as fuel becomes more expensive and materials become more scarce (do you really think fuel prices will decrease with our new Frac gas?  Wait until we add enough tax to repair our failing roads—hello European prices).

Indianapolis race cars weigh about 1500 pounds, are capable of well over 200 miles per hour, and seem to allow drivers to survive horrendous crashes.  Can’t we at least make automobiles to go to the grocery store that weigh under a ton and also please Mr Ulrich?

 

 

 

Classic Products and Product Quality

My wife brought not only her wonderful self to our marriage, but also a classic Kitchenaid mixer.  They both become even more wonderful as the years pass.  But let’s talk about the mixer here.  This is a photograph of it.  It was originally light green, but at one time she was so in love with her Honda CRX, that I painted the mixer to match, even though it did not go around corners as fast. It is a product that is often called iconic, and after its birth in 1919, it arrived in pretty much its present form in the mid 1950’s.  Its Wikipedia based history is here. It will undoubtedly outlive both my wife and me.

 We both cook, and from time to time I try to perfect bread, so we do quite a bit of heavy-duty mixing.  The mixer never even breathes hard.  The top locks down, and the speed is variable.  No other controls—none needed. The mixing tools skim the bowl inner surface, and everything is easy to clean.  It is heavy enough that it does not move around the counter, the bowl secures to the base with a simple part-turn, its form screams  MIXER, and no instruction book is needed to operate it.  Also it  has never broken in its 50 years of life.

 It is easy to use, reliable and serviceable, beautifully made, elegant, makes one feel like a big-time chef, and does not involve disposable items.  I love it.  It gets high grades on all of the items in my Good Products, Bad Products book.  The present version is definitely relatively expensive compared to the lower mixer prices at Walmart or even Target, but to me well worth the money, since obviously this older model does its duty magnificently and will continue through at least one human lifetime.  Since we haven’t owned a new one for 50 years, I can’t vouch for their quality, but I am hoping Kitchenaid hasn’t succumbed to lowering the quality to reduce their costs.

 Of course, by producing a mixer like this, Kitchenaid gives up the opportunity to produce a cheaper new model with “advanced” features and a shorter lifetime every few years, thereby opening up marketing opportunities and a chance to hook customers into buying new ones more often.  Undoubtedly it would be easy to include a bit of digital memory that held all known recipes—and for all I know someone is doing that.  But come on……….

 I always think hard when I like something that I have grown up with or had a long time, to try make sure that I am not giving up a better option by giving too much credit to sentiment and what I am used to.  But I usually conclude that if products stay around in near to their original form for long enough to be called “classic”, or “iconic”, there is something going on there.  If you are a consumer, it is worth figuring out what it is, and demanding it from industrially produced products,  If  you are a producer, focus on making such products.  They are better for  your brand than all the advertising you can buy.

Hammers and Quality

Tools that have evolved over many years tend to be of high quality and often survive breakthroughs in technology.  Think of the common hammer, one of my favorite tools.  It has certainly benefited from many years of development, and still holds its own despite the presence of nail guns, which have captured a large piece of the “commercial” market because of their speed.

I was introduced to “hand” tools early in life, as my family used few power tools and did all of its own construction.  Here is a photo of me at 21 months of age, helping build the family house.

I had my own small hammer, and was attacking a nail that was a bit beyond my size, but I was definitely encouraged to learn to use tools.  And I did.  And the basic skills have served me very well indeed.

One advantage of the common hammer, is that not only does it perform its job well, but it has not changed a great deal over my life.  The two hammers in the photo below are one used by my grandfather, which I acquired upon his death 60 years ago and have used constantly since then, and one I acquired a few years ago because it is heavier and better suited for framing. 

Evidence of maturity can be seen because there is not a lot of difference between the two, even though the one with the wooden handle may be pushing 100 years of age.  Having trained on my little childhood hammer, I seem to be able to pick up any hammer—new, old, mine, my neighbor’s, one in our student shop or belonging to anyone in my family— and use it equally well with no training, no short course, and no manual/video.  It is a hugely flexible tool, useful for everything from driving nails to demolishing unwanted structures, preventing pieces of paper from blowing around, and scratching my back. And it does not need time to boot, deliver spam to me, post advertisements, crash, or die.

Examining the hammer in the context of my Good Products, Bad Products book, it certainly delivers great value for its cost, fits me, is nicely made, is a beautiful, elegant, and sophisticated device, gives me membership in a culture I respect (those who work with hand tools), is very easy on the environment, and I obviously love it.  Happiness to me is building things, and nothing surpasses banging on things with my hammer.

Two More Dave Beach Questions

In Dave Beach and my “conversation” described in my April 16 post, the next two questions from him, after “why is manufacturing important”, were “why is product quality important”t, and “how are the chapter concepts in your Good Products, Bad Products book related”.

Product Quality is  important for three reasons:

     1.  Competitiveness

     2.  The Quality of Life

     3.  Motivation and Self Image

For the foreseeable future, businesses will continue to compete, probably globally, and hopefully material well-being will rise, at least in poorer nations.  It is also probable that businesses in wealthier countries will have continuing problems competing with businesses in poorer countries in the production of  lower quality products,  Also higher quality products have a marketplace advantage and are both more attractive at the same cost (Toyota automobiles), and offer higher profitability at a higher cost (Apple iPhones),

Technology is hopefully for the purpose of benefiting us humans.  It should satisfy our needs, make our lives more interesting, keep us healthier,  maintain our environment,  and decrease hardship. If it does not do such things, it fails.  In a sense, overall product quality can be measured by how much a product improves the quality of life.

It is extremely rewarding to be involved in the production of use of an outstanding product.  Organizations producing such products and the people working in them are proud of their role.  People  associated with them become more involved in their work and more productive.  The United States used to be very proud of the label “Made in America”.  Wouldn’t it be nice to get there again – to feel that whatever we produced, it was the best in the world?

The Chapters in my book have to do with the performance, cost, and price of industrial products, compatibility of the products with the human user, craftsmanship in the production of them, emotional reaction to them, aesthetic appeal of them, the symbolism and cultural fit of them, and consistency of the products with global constraints (environment, etc.)  These factors are related in that they are all essential in the production of them and benefits to the user, and difficult to handle quantitatively.  At first glance such things as performance, cost, and price, seem easily measurable, but it is more difficult to do so over the lifetime of products and when the subtleties of perception are included.  As one proceeds through the chapters, metrics become more and more difficult to describe the quality of the product and the reaction of the user.  Love?  Beauty?  Elegance?  Symbolism? When it comes to global constraints, it becomes simpler to attach numbers to such things as supply of resources, severity of pollution, global warming, and loss of species, but for many (most?) people there seems to be a good bit of resistance to using these numbers and the desire to  collectively bury our heads in the sand and hope the problems are not real. 

I will delve further into this in a future post. 

General Topics on Manufacturing and Product Quality

Since the Stanford ME 314 Good Products, Bad Products course is now over, I will leave the topic.  Should any of you reading this blog be teaching a similar course, or if you would like to do so, contact Dave Beach ([email protected]), and he will be glad to send you information or conspire with you.

I am scheduled to give a few talks on my book, as part of the routine of bringing it to people’s attention.  Dave and I did a “conversation” on the topics contained in the book to a couple of hundred people on the Stanford campus last week, and it was fun.  The format called for Dave to ask me questions, and for me to answer them as best as I could.  I actually had the easier role, because I had the option of muttering a few words and then saying “what do you think, Dave?”. 

I thought it might be of interest to discuss a few of the questions and answers (?) with you.  The questions are here.  Look through them and think about how you might answer them.  I thought that beginning with the next post, I would give you my personal, perhaps biased opinion on some of them.  But just so you know that the U.S. is not alone in worrying about such questions, here is an interesting article on Japanese concerns about the topic of manufacturing that was on the front page of  the April 16 edition of the New York Times.

Product Quality and Longevity

One thing I noticed in the ME314 class I have been reporting on, was a focus on new products.  This is in fact typical of our society.  This completely overlooks the value of products that have served the owner well for a long time.  Sometimes, they almost become a part of the owner.  This is a photo of me in my Carhartt jacket, which I bought some time ago—at least ten years.  My son the farmer discovered Carhartt work clothes and suggested that I buy one.  It was quite expensive for work clothes at the time, but I bought it, and plan perhaps to be buried in it.  As you can see, it has seen some hard service, and it is stained and faded.  But never has the zipper failed, it has withstand many brutal slashes and snags, it doesn’t mind water, oil, mud, or most other materials, and it keeps me properly warm and snuggy when the California climate turns treacherously cold. It is part of me, and I don’t want a new one, a cleaner one, or one with  more bells and whistles. To me it is priceless.  And oddly enough, Goodwill Industries would probably  not accept it.

I told this to Marian,my wife, and she countered with a younger, but similarly important garment that has become part of her in only a year or two.  Happily, I noticed it in a student submission on good products and told her about it.  It is a woman’s vest made by Scottevest. Like my Carhartt coat, it was fairly expensive for a vest, but she looks swell in it, and can you believe, it has 24 pockets inside.  Here she is looking for something in it.  She originally bought it to travel, which it was originally designed for, and it is exceptional.  It doesn’t totally replace a suitcase, but all the gadgets, potions, and entertainments she takes with her on trips fit in the pockets, and from the outside, she looks slick as a snake. 

Of course, she now wears it almost constantly no matter what she is doing, and probably has forgotten where such things as purses and fannypacks are.  She loves it far above its original price, and although she says it is beginning to look a bit threadbare, I’ll bet she wears it for many years rather than buy a new one.

Behavioral economists refer to rigorous experiments that show the additional value we place on products that we have owned for long periods of time and have come to love.  You have probably experienced this, if you have ever tried to sell something of this sort and been astonished at how little people will pay for it.  I now keep everything I love that I can.  A storage problem, but would you throw away one of your old pets?

Of course, this isn’t the optimal economic response for  Carhartt and Scottevest.  They now have a broad line of products (men and women) and are constantly coming out with “improved” models, which they might like Marian and me to buy.  But they keep their prices high and their profits reasonable. and as long as they keep their quality  high, everyone should be happy.  

Perceived Product Quality, Pricing, Sales, and Discounts

In Chapter 3 of  my Good Products, Bad Products book,  I argued that high quality products should not be insulted by the “40% off for a limited time”, or “buy one, get one free” mentality that seems to be so wide spread in the U.S.  Perhaps this mentality, that apparently causes people to line up outside stores on “Black Friday” and other such "sale" days well before the store opens, may be beginning to ebb.  J.C. Penney, a store that has had hundreds of sales per year for the past few years (590 last year), has just announced that it is going to lower all of its prices by 40 %, and offer only “monthly value” discounts on selected merchandise each month, and clearance deals called “best price” the first and third Friday of each month.  Obviously, the every-day low prices at competitors such as Walmart have hurt them, and although some shoppers seem to love the “oh boy” nature of constant sales, others (me) find this approach to shopping a real pain.  And of course, one always wonders where stores get the “full price” from which they cut.  Apparently, last year approximately 70% of Penney’s revenue came from merchandise that was discounted by 50% or more.

I for one, am delighted to see this move at Penney’s happen, whether it works or not.  It is time to experiment with rational, constant, and simpler pricing (I am also tired of prices ending in 99 cents).

But Penny’s is certainly not the only merchandiser in this “sale” mode.  The last time I bought a vehicle, I had found what I wanted, which although relatively low cost, had the high reliability, decent fuel mileage, and lack of feature creep that I wanted.  To me the quality for the price was high. Armed with all the pricing information I could glean from various sources, and awareness of all of the strange and arguable fees that appear on window stickers, I approached a sales person at a dealer that had been recommended to me.  He was, in fact, both knowledgeable and reasonable, and after dealing with the questionable nature of invoice prices, installed extras I did not want, and various items that were actually kick backs to the dealer, we  arrived at a price I thought reasonable. I did not want to finance the vehicle, so I would have happily paid the amount and left with the vehicle.  But, at that point, after telling me that it was too bad that I had just missed a sale which would have lowered the price $1500, he told me he could give me that “discount” if I financed the vehicle.  I told him again that I did not want to finance it, but now I was not as happy with the price, even though I know that much of the profit in the automobile business is from financing, so it was not surprising that they were trying to talk me into financing the purchase.

 He then told me that if I financed it for the minimum loan (also $1500) there was no charge, and I could go right home and send in a check for $1500 and pay off my loan, thus saving $1500 on the vehicle  At that point I realized that the U.S. approach to sales was going to triumph, even though the vehicle was a foreign brand .  I filled out the forms for a $1500 loan, went home and mailed in my check, and soon got many e-mail messages from many levels of the company thanking me for paying off my loan, buying from them, etc.  But a month or so later I started getting letters from banks informing me that I did not qualify for the loan. 

After many phone calls and e-mail messages I found out that the company was seeking to sell my loan at a lower rate than I was to pay (standard procedure) and somehow the letters that were supposed to go to the company refusing to buy the loan at the terms the company was proposing were coming to me.

Obviously the negotiation between the company and various banks did not affect me much, since I had already “paid off” the loan. It was due to lags in communication within the system, obviously acceptable if I had taken years to pay off the loan, and confusion between my name and address and that of the dealer.  But after I purchased the vehicle, I was also overwhelmed by a tsunami of obviously automatic e-mail messages from the dealer and many levels of the company thanking me for my purchase, asking me to use their service and parts centers,  asking me to fill out detailed questionnaires on my satisfaction with my treatment while buying the car and with the car itself, and attempting to sell me more cars. 

Did this behavior decrease my perception of the quality of the product?  Sure.  It took my time and tried my patience. And despite the excellent work of the sales person,  I felt that if the dealer and company were playing this strange game with apparent, but not real financing, were unable to channel letters from banks to the right parties, and were unable to do a reasonable job of controlling their promotional e-mail, maybe there might be something wrong with the vehicle also.

  Fortunately, it is behaving well.  Thankfully, the people who design and manufacture the vehicles have different DNA from those who try to talk you into financing, can't control their correspondence,  and send you automatic and unwanted love letters that add to your e-mail load.

 

Too Tall Pickup?

If you are in the Good Products, Bad Products class right now at Stanford, you can skip this post, because I complained a bit both in class and in my book about the size of my “full sized” 2011 pickup. But I want to put this post in my blog because I am fascinated about how products such as automobiles in the U.S. seem to grow in size until they become too big, and digital products seem to shrink until they become too small.  Then there is usually a great break-through, and U.S. automobile manufacturers discover smaller cars and people making smaller digital products discover larger ones (pads?).

My pickup, a 2011 Toyota Tundra, is shown here backed up to a 1966 Chevrolet – both l/2 ton pickups with 8 foot beds.  All mid 1950's full-size pickups were approximately the same size, as are all 2011 full size pickups.   The growth is obvious, but the reason for it is not.  On first glance, the larger door might be convenient, except that the seat, being positioned by the steering wheel, is far toward the front of the door opening.  If one tries to use the door when parked next to other cars, the door cannot be opened far enough to provide as much space as a smaller door would.  True, there is more room to put stuff behind the seat than in the older pickup, but this room is useless for most people I know (including me), because the space rapidly fills up with miscellaneous objects, which one forgets are there, and which are very difficult to find and remove if one does not.

But my chief complaint is the height of the pickup.  The bed is deeper, the clearance is greater, and the suspension looks like it allows a larger amount of movement.  The distance between the top of the rear tire and the body work gives an indication of this and can be seen in the photo above.  The result is a very long step to get into the back, difficulty in reaching objects in the bed from over the side, and even a long step  get into the passenger compartment.  I had to add an aftermarket running board to make it reasonable for my wife to get into and out of the truck, and in fact, to make it reasonable  for myself.  And I cannot reach small objects in the middle of the bed from standing on the ground beside the truck, and I am 6’2”.

Why is this a problem?  Because I use the truck to haul things, and that is what pickups were for.  This picture shows a 2011 Ford F-150 that a farmer friend of mine owns.   He became so annoyed at not being able to reach things in the bed that he removed the box and put a flatbed on the frame.  The next picture shows a typical load – the kind of stuff that farmers haul around.   I could go on for some time -  On modern pickups there are inadequate load tie-downs and the body acquires and shows dings enthusiastically.  This picture shows a  tail-light assembly on my truck.  The other one is broken.  This assembly shatters easily and it is so large and protruding  that it is difficult to avoid breaking and replacing it, for $100 or so ($200 from a dealer).  The Chevrolet tail light and back up light are below—adequate, harder to hit, and cheaper to replace. But I will not go further.

There are many good points about my 2011 pickup.  It has high reliability and for a good sized pickup gets reasonable mileage.  I was able to acquire it with minimum bells and whistles of the type that begin failing over time.  My plan is to lower it, (because I —like most pickup owners— have no intention of racing it to the tip of Baja California nor driving it off-road through mountains) and drive it until I rebuild the Chevrolet!

As I say in the book, modern pickups, are somewhere between a car and a truck –  compromise vehicles.  I want an honest 1/2 ton truck with an eight foot bed to haul miscellaneous things around and that provides decent mileage, wears scratches and dents proudly, is easily serviceable, has a long life, and  fits me.  I do not need one to help me look tougher, or either cooler or hotter.    I am not looking for fights, I am cool enough, and I don't need to hit on  cowgirls.   I would think that there are enough people like me that there is a potential quality product out there that could make some company some money.

 

 

Habits, change and creativity

 

So how do we change habits?  Let’s say we want to stop smoking, or lose weight, 0r decrease our triathlon time.  We first of all need to want something strongly.  The win (or avoidance of loss) must be worth the effort needed to get there – and incidentally we almost always underestimate the effort.  Then we have to consciously change our habits – with attendendant lapses and discouragement mixed with satisfying but sometimes slow and only occasional gains.  With adequate attention and discipline we can over time change, or develop new habits, and be better for it.  This applies to increasing creativity as well as improving our tennis game.

We all know that increasing our creativity would result in more risk, complexity, and failures in our life.  We probably know that we are pretty safe and could tolerate a bit more of this risk.  But life might be more difficult, because we are wired to avoid risk and failure and because societies, especially big ones, do not happily tolerate too much deviance from the pack.  A little bit makes for interest and excitement.  But too much?  What does the word insanity signify?  It is more behavioral deviance than a society wishes to deal with.  A great read is A Wonderful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar,, the biography of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who won the Nobel prize in economics (there is none in mathemtics).  It is a tale of someone living on the social mental edge – rightfully called a genius, but suffering from schizophrenia.  Most of us wouldn’t want to go there. And we won't, because we are generally risk avoiders.

For a good read on the tremendous amount of effort it requires to achieve and maintain creativity at an extremely  high level, read The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp, a revolutionary choreographer.  It is about the tremendous commitment and discipline required to lead in her field.  She sacrifices many things she might like to do in order to focus on dance.  I once gave a talk at a meeting at which she also spoke.  She was having severe knee problems, but continuing to coach her dancers by going through the movements she wanted from them.  Obviously pain was involved.  But her comment about all of this was “Gotta dance”.

I used to teach a seminar on freshmen on different intellectual disciplines.  Freshmen have no business committing to a major yet, because they don’t know what’s out there.  But Universities insist on pushing early choices.  I would bring in high visibility members of the faculty (Nobel, Pulitzer, McArthur Prize, Pulitzer Prize winners, etc.) and let the students talk with them about how they achieved what they had done.  They all spoke of the work involved  and sacrifices they had made.  But they also all loved what they did, and were at least at one point obsessed with doing it. They all had the creative habit.

But how about the majority of us who are neither as focussed, motivated, or obsessed with a single field or direction and would like to become more creative and/or change?

My method of dealing with creativity has among other things concerned with seeking to understand  habit and response to risk by trying to understanding brains on an operational level (not mechanical).  Why are they so resistant to change? (medical care).   Or why do they sometimes fall so in love with new things?  (social networking).  That led me originally to the Conceptual Blockbusting approach – understanding individual, group, and organizational inhibitions to creativity and attempting to help increase creativity by addressing these.  I will talk a bit more about this in the next post.