YOU are correct about about what planned obsolescence means. This is NOT what Irlandes is saying.
I’m not convinced that GM or Ford purposely designed vehicles/parts to fail in a certain amount of time…
But I’m pretty convinced that they did NOTHING to prevent it either. If a VP had to decide to making a better part or to keep costs down so he/she could get that fat quarterly bonus…I guarantee that the Bonus would win MOST of the time.
“Ford (F) said most of the 750 salaried workers it plans to add over the next two years will be added in Dearborn, Mich… Areas include: Design, product development, product engineering, manufacturing and electric vehicle engineering.”
Did you not even read this quote which I pulled for you already?
And again - what your “finding” for India shows is nothing related to Ford or GM or Chrysler. YES, they have hired and are hiring in India - but they’re also hiring THOUSANDS in the US. Why on earth do people believe we’re entitled to jobs simply because of where the company’s HQ is? You’re massively overstating the size and expansion of GM/Ford/Chryslers engineering in India and seriously understating their commitment to the US - where they get a minority of their sales but have a majority of their engineering and R&D staff.
MikeInNH 10:56AM Report
I’m not convinced that GM or Ford purposely designed vehicles/parts to fail in a certain amount of time…
But I’m pretty convinced that they did NOTHING to prevent it either. If a VP had to decide to making a better part or to keep costs down so he/she could get that fat quarterly bonus…I guarantee that the Bonus would win MOST of the time.
If you’re talking about their efforts to prevent failure up through to the early 90s - mid 2000s (wide variance depending on the company you’re looking at), then I’d agree.
“but they’re also hiring THOUSANDS in the US.”
As I said…MAYBE now they are…but not for the past 15 years…2 years ago GM was on death row…for a good portion of this century GM has laid off TENS OF THOUSANDS of workers…
As for how many engineers and manufacturer workers GM is going to hire…we’ll see…
Regarding “planned obsolescence”. I disagree that it means the same thing as ‘continual improvement’. I would hope that each maker improves their cars year by year. And adding features like AWD often needs to be staged in, it would be inefficient to have everything designed and ready to go on year 1 of a 5-year vehicle life. Staging introductions of features evens out the design load.
EXACTLY! Planned obsolescence in automobiles was all about making the product seem old after only a couple years. Adding new features will help sell cars, but it doesn’t make the old one obsolete.
A computer that works 2% faster than an older one doesn’t make that older computer obsolete. It takes a big change in performance, and a lack of software compatibility to make the slower computer obsolete. In other words, it takes more than an improvement in the product to make the old one obsolete. The old product must become useless, or less useful. It’s about the old product, not the new one.
Here are a few questions for eraser1998:
If your marketing strategy, which includes the four Ps of marketing (PRODUCT, price, place, and promotion), includes planned obsolescence in 1-2 years, why would you design the parts of your PRODUCT to last longer than 1-2 years?
Now that you’ve admitted Ford, GM, and Chrysler had marketing plans that included planned obsolescence, how are you now going to make the case that marketing plans didn’t effect the quality of the parts used in the product? Think about it. If the engineers know the folks in marketing want the product to be obsolete in two years, how do the engineers isolate themselves from that aspect of the corporate culture?
Frankly, I don’t see how you can have a marketing plan that includes planned obsolescence and still have parts that are designed to last longer than the time period in which the product will become obsolete. Please explain to me how that works.
I am not saying these companies deliberately shortened the life of parts. I am saying they had no interest, and took no effort, to improve quality. If a part lasted five years, they didn’t look it and say, “let’s see if we can shorten it’s life.” They probably said, “Hay, this alternator will last twice as long as the one we currently use, and it only costs one dollar more, why don’t we use it?” The answer was, “Planned obsolescence. We would sell fewer cars. Now stop trying to improve vehicle longevity and go sit at your desk.” There are engineers who worked for Detroit’s big three and wrote about such experiences. That was the corporate culture at those companies.
Ok, so you’re as far out there as Irlandes on what planned obsolescence means then. Geez…
You do NOT design a car to fall apart at a certain age. You simply do NOT do it. You end up ticking off your customers and losing business in the long run. What you DO do (and what the Japanese do, too) is to plan a release of upgrades to your vehicle that make the previous years seem dated. When you have a natural 5-10 year product cycle, you’ll get killed in sales 3+ years in if you don’t have something new to entice customers.
Adding features doesn’t MAKE the old vehicle obsolete - it makes it SEEM obsolete to the customer - the new one becomes more desirable, and that gets people to trade in or pay more for the newer model because they want that upgrade. Similarly, a computer running 2% faster than an older one doesn’t make the old one obsolete, but it makes the faster one more desirable, and you get a price premium and extra attention in the marketplace because of it.
Like it or not, this IS what planned obsolescence is in relation to the auto industry. The accusation that parts or vehicles were designed to fall apart and be useless after a certain number of years is absolutely ludicrous… and like it or not, the foreign automakers practice planned obsolescence in the EXACT same way as the domestics.
eraser1998: “You do NOT design a car to fall apart at a certain age.”
I know that. I even said so. I’ll repeat that part for your benefit.
I am not saying these companies deliberately shortened the life of parts. I am saying they had no interest, and took no effort, to improve quality. If a part lasted five years, they didn’t look it and say, “let’s see if we can shorten it’s life.” They probably said, “Hay, this alternator will last twice as long as the one we currently use, and it only costs one dollar more, why don’t we use it?” The answer was, “Planned obsolescence. We would sell fewer cars. Now stop trying to improve vehicle longevity and go sit at your desk.” There are engineers who worked for Detroit’s big three and wrote about such experiences. That was the corporate culture at those companies.
This was a systemic issue back then, and any car you could get at the time was of the same quality, so there was no competition based on quality, and that’s the way Detroit liked it.
I call bull on your reason why they wouldn’t fix a problem. It wasn’t that they thought by not fixing it they would be able to sell more cars later - it was simply that doing so would cost them profit NOW, and they were incredibly short-sighted. It wasn’t a result of planned obsolescence… it was simply management trying to eek out profit for THIS quarter, future be damned, so that they could get their bonuses…
eraser1998: “I call bull on your reason…”
I’m sorry. I thought I was talking to an adult until now. Please let me know when an adult comes back into the room.
Mike…you may not be convinced, but I am. After discussing this topic with engineers at subcontracting plants for several different car makers, I feel they are concerned that components have a finite working life. Even if they can get superior parts for no additional cost, they have refused and insisted upon their design specs for longevity, or lack of.
Until we all admit that the car industry profits mainly from turn over and includes the engineering that addresses that, we keep getting into these debates about why GM builds cars one way and Honda another. It’s all about their approach to profit making as all car companies are capable of building longer lasting cars for no more money than they do now.
Car companies are like banks, investment corporations, oil companies, health insurance and others who collude with each other to minimize competition and informally agree to produce cars within certain parameters. They share parts, models ad engineering to that end. They are all capable of producing cars that last generations at little more expense than now with much less repair. Profiteering prevents this effort. Longevity is directly attributed to govt. regulations and has little to do with customer expectations and "p- ing " off anyone. Hondas in general are more reliable then GM, not because GM can’t produce a more reliable car, but because of marketing decisions and the fleet car mentality which has served them well for many years till now. You don’t believe We can make a reliable, long lasting car out of stock components ? Look at the Yellow Cab company.
BTW Whitey, you are too kind. You may not be willing to say that car companies deliberately shorten the life of their cars, but I will !