Volkswagen Group sells passenger cars under the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and of course, Volkswagen nameplates... That's not too bad... The fact that Tata owns Jaguar and Land Rover is somewhat more disturbing...
Everything is becoming a throw away product... Has anyone here taken an iPod Touch apart? My kid broke the touchscreen twice... It's really not intended to be taken apart and put back together... And they are starting to make cars the same way... Automatic transmissions are now commonly sealed units that you can't check the fluid level or add fluid to it without special equipment... And very quickly many new cars can really only be diagnosed by the dealership... Stealership... You decide...
And the people that have the most of the latest gadgets that are really not serviceable seem to also be the ones that are so concerned with the environment and scold me because I still have a few incandescent lights in my house... What do you think is a bigger problem, throwing out a refrigerator that is 5 years old because it's not worth fixing, or having a 100 watt incandescent bulb where there is no good alternative...
The game now is to make products that will just make it past the warranty... Washers and dryers should easily make it past the manufacturers warranty and the extended warranties they sell. Good luck when something does break, though. I worked for Samsung, and I couldn't get parts for a co-workers washer that had a fairly minor problem... They just weren't available unless you paid the factory tech the big bucks to fix the little problems that inevitably crop up.
I have to hand it to Apple, though... Their products seem to be very well engineered and very high quality... But a Mac notebook costs about 4 times what an equivalently powered PC laptop costs... And the price differential for an iPod over any other music player is almost ridiculous... But they are better. I still have my iPod Mini, and I use it daily. The hard drive didn't fail, I just wanted more room so I took out the 4GB hard drive and replaced it with a 32GB compact flash. I have used that thing literally almost every day for 10 years or so, and it has yet to malfunction...
Whirlpool is almost all that's left of the American appliance companies... And they are not doing really well against the Koreans and the Europeans... Even Australia is starting to gain serious steam at appliance manufacturing... Fisher and Paykel refrigerators are pretty highly rated by buyers... And Breville makes outstanding small appliances...
I read a post by Jeff Immelt of GE titled "Why We're Betting On Manufacturing"
This is from a guy who has shipped hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas... Any CEO or CFO can be lumped into the same category we used to joke about politicians... How can you tell when they're lying? When their lips are moving...
When did this column devolve to nothing more than a gripe session? No analysis of a problem, no engineering insight, just a rant about dishwashers. This is supposed to be an engineering-focused forum, not just one more place to whine online.
Quality Whirlpool products used to be made in Evansville Indiana. They pulled out of there so they could be produced "south of the border" for lower labor rates. After they announced they would close the Evansville plant, but before they moved, there was all the drug lord problems "down there" so they decided instead to move to another location in the states. I'm glad they stayed in the US, but think of all the experienced engineers and labors they kicked out the door. Whirlpool's "quality" has been anything but since their plant closing and relocations. I purchased a microwave from them (made in Mexico) and the transformer burned up within a year. I, like some of the others in this posting, luckily found a replacement part on the web for much less than "factory service" was charging. I guess what I'm saying is this... I see on ABC news their little jabs about how we should be buying American products to support America. I propose that if American products were worth a damn, we'd be buying them, but I refuse to buy a car that will last 100000 miles when I can buy a foreign car that will last 300000 miles. Wake up America!
Chuck, I was completely amazed. It was retailing for somewhere between $400-600 at the time, which would be equivalent to probably twice that now in inflated dollars. This was during a short period when MS was actually trying to improve their notoriously bad telephone customer service. I think it was in the mid to late 90s, but don't quote me on that.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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