The worst feature of my Hotpoint dishwasher is the cutlery basket, which has a molded-plastic mesh base. Most of us do not place dirty knives (which have the heaviest handles) carefully into their dishwasher pockets. Instead, we drop them a few inches. So it is inevitable that the mesh breaks.
Once the mesh started to tear, I complained about this to Hotpoint, and the customer service department sent a replacement. Meanwhile, I drilled holes and tied 0.75mm nylon fishing line to reinforce the original mesh. The replacement is no stronger. It will break just as easily unless I work out a better plan before I use it. Why should I have to redesign a feature that was probably never properly tested?
How much more would it cost to make the cutlery basket mesh 3mm or 4mm deep instead of about 1mm? This is inexplicable.
The second poor feature is the lower tray. It has two rows of plate holders that can be folded down. Once they are folded down, half the tray is just flat, and the cutlery basket occupies a quarter of the fixed rows. How much more would it cost to provide two sections of folding plate holders half the width, instead of one full width?
In my estimation, the cost to improve on these design flaws could be counted in pennies. It would probably be less than 0.1 percent of the total bill of materials. A more imaginative and versatile design may have cost no more at all. I have a stainless-steel drainer on my counter, next to the sink, which is made with a pattern of small dimples, which allows all sizes of plates and dishes and glasses in any orientation. I would guess it is cheaper to make than the more complicated, more traditional dishwasher design. Isn't that what engineering design is all about?
This entry was submitted by Rod Dalitz and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Tell us your experiences with Monkey-designed products. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Made by Monkeys.
It drives you crazy to see these bad design choices that with a little ingenuity and a couple of "extra pennies," as you say, towards the BOM, could have been easily avoided. Those mesh baskets are a royal pain whatever the sizing of the mesh. They inevitably get nicked, ripped, or whatever and cost you an arm and a leg to replace (The self fix of piecing together with wiring wouldn't cut it in my house, sorry!)
This is first 'Made by Monkeys' post I've read, and I'm surprised to see them on this site. It largely seems like folks saying 'wah, wah, wah, my cheap product is cheap!'. As a product design engineer, I see first-hand the impact of choices that companies make to cust costs. This article in particular shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difficulty and cost of good design. Making the mesh basket stronger may only cost 'pennies' per part - but the design, testing and validation to know when the basket is 'good enough' will cost far more than that. There are better quality dishwashers on the market. Unsurprisingly, they are more expensive than poor quality dishwashers.
I have never designed a dishwasher, but this seems to me to be a classic case of 'getting what you pay for'. In the U.S., Hotpoint is a 'value' (aka low-cost) brand of GE. GE won't even put the GE brand on these appliances, because it would sully GE's good name. They have no impetus to design quality, long-lasting products because Hotpoint customers are typically focused on one thing when they walk into the store - cost. Cheap, cheap, cheap. So GE is willing to cut everything they can to achieve that. They don't care about good reviews, because the average Hotpoint customer isn't even reading reviews - they just know their dishwasher broke, and it's time to head to the home store and get a new one. A cheap one.
If you care about good design, be willing to pay for it. I.e., before you criticize something as 'Made by Monkeys', be sure you understand how your own actions (priortization of cost over quality) impacted the design.
Just because something has a low price doesn't mean it should break in normal use. My Toyota cost about $17k new and I expect it to provide good transportation. Just because it costs less than a Cadillac, it shouldn't break down more often. Unfortunately many manufacturers don't really give a damn about quality.
As to the dishwasher utensil baskets, cut some 1/8th-inch plastic sheet, drill a few holes in it for drainage and put it in the bottom of the basket compartments. I have a GE washer and the baskets are OK, but eventually a sharp knife will take its toll on the bottom plastic webbing, no matter the quality of the plastic or design.
CDavis, welcome to Made by Monkeys. Read a few more. You'll be surprised by what you find. There's quite a variety of design flaws that our engineer readers have discovered.
You may also enjoy the Sherlock Ohms blog. The Sherlock blog tells stories of engineering problems that were worked out with persistence and Sherlock-style deductive logic.
I couldn't agree more, Jon. If you look at Consumer Reports annual reliability ratings, Honda Accord gets better ratings than most of the Cadillacs, Mercedes, and BMWs, year after year. Even if you don't trust Consumer Reports, it's still fair to say that Accord buyers are happy with their cars. If a low-priced appliance is a piece of junk, maybe the manufacturer should think twice about building and selling it.
People often beg the question of how much more would it have cost to do X versus Y. This is assuming that every logical design was put on a table and the accountants got to pick solely on cost. In reality, it may be much simpler in that the design was poor to begin with. A design was created that "worked" and that was enough. If it worked well or even saved money may have never been addressed. I have certainly seen products that were no cheaper just because they were poorly designed.
I'm not sure how GE/Hotpoint works but it seems reasonable to me that in companies like this that the engineers designing the Hotpoint brand are just as capable as the engineers designing the GE brand. Who knows, they may be the same people. Anyway, the point is you can't hold products of all price ranges to the same standards. Obviously less time and money went into a product that is less expensive - that is why it costs less.
The cost of good design should be minimal over a big production run. Hotpoint Aquarius is a major product range and is (or was) GEC top of the range. Since Hotpoint has been going for many decades, their designers should have plenty of experience of faults and issues.
As an engineer, I know that I would recognise a weak design, and I maintain the cost of maybe 2% extra plastic and I think 0% extra machining to make a stronger part would save a much greater cost in guarantee claims, never mind reputation.
Reviews need to be taken with (several) grains of salt. Before I bought my first Jeep Cherokee I read the reviews. The Isuzu Trooper was recommended over the Cherokee. The Trooper was under-powered, had the same cargo space, did not have an established dealer network, did not have a production history. The reviewer obviously was prejudiced against the Cherokee = I bought a Cherokee.
I also am unimpressed with the current aggrandization of Toyota and Honda. When a dealer tells you a car is worth more because of better 'quality', are you getting more or less 'quality' per dollar spent ?
Perhaps this article should be titled "Used by Monkeys".
All dishwasher manuals I have seen (including the random Hotpoint one I veiwed on-line) state to place silverware in the basket with the handle down. So maybe if the dishwasher is used properly the basket works fine.
Not everything can be designed for people with no regard for common sense to operate.
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