Re: Cheeky Tata - Should We bail Them Out?
- From: Joe <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:01:29 +0000
MM wrote:
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:54:52 +0000, Joe <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
MM wrote:On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:26:32 +1300, Roger DewhurstTo some extent, but you must surely be aware of the economics of repair and replacement.
<dewhurst@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
William Black wrote:Why don't they repair the vehicles they already have? Hardly anything"Maria" <fedupwoman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:mr6dneA7nvQIyNfUnZ2dneKdnZzinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxIf that is so it would be sensible for the government to require the army to buy vehicles annually in small numbers rather than in large numbers every ten years.William Black wrote:Because the British army, their major customer, has only just taken delivery of its last major contract with them and there is no prospect, because of long vehicle life cycles, of another one for about five to ten years."Maria" <fedupwoman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:0oadnSthTaUXodfUnZ2dnUVZ8uidnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxIf they are that good, why are they struggling?Tata has asked for bailout money from the government, for Corus steel and Jaguar. Should we, shouldn't we?Both companies make a decent product, one of them, the Land Rover part of 'Jaguar Land Rover' is a major military supplier.
nowadays is repaired. It is simply chucked away with 95% of its
functionality reusable. Many goods are put together with special
screws that are hard for the layman to undo, so that buying a
replacement is the only option. Planned obsolescence I think it's
called.
What IS it with us humans that require us to buy a new toaster every
few years? Surely the purpose of a toaster is to toast bread, so when
we bought that toaster five years ago, why would we even think of a
new one today if the old one still works? But we are persuaded -
brainwashed - by clever adverts into "needing" a new one, even if we
don't. Same with washing machines and dishwashers. The bloke from
Calgon warns about limescale attacking the element, but why do we
never hear about the stainless steel drum going wrong? Certain parts
of most goods will NEVER wear out! The drum, f'rinstance, or the "box"
part of a fridge. These will last for a hundred years, no problem. So
if the designers can give some components extended longevity, why not
all the other parts, like the element that is subject to limescale
damage? Why couldn't any housewife buy JUST a new element at Tesco for
a fiver, like a video cassette, or replacement dust bags for the
Hoover, and fit it herself by releasing a couple of easy to operate
spring clips? Nope! Can't be designed like that! No planned
obsolescence, you see! Consumers have to be led to the slaughter of
their wallets and purses on a regular basis to uphold the expensive
lifestyles of rich capitalists who are laughing all the way to their
equally greedy bankers.
1. The overheads of importing a single spare part are pretty much the same as for the whole product. Obviously transport costs are lower, but not much else. With electronic goods, the smallest replaceable item usually costs 80% or more of the value of the original product, so allowing for labour costs, there is little to gain. Don't even think about suggesting the component-level repair of modern domestic electronic equipment. The cost of the necessary test and repair equipment and the cost of people who know enough to do it usefully quickly are prohibitive, and manufacturers will not be prepared to reveal enough technical information about the product to make many repairs even possible. A few types of electronic goods are expensive enough to make repair practical, but none of them are used domestically.
2. Spare part requirements are not predictable over the life of the product, and the parts are ordered and their production arranged back to raw materials at least a year before manufacture. Parts are delivered for manufacture only, and spares are *not* stocked by manufacturers. By the time spares requirements can be reasonably well estimated, production will have moved onto the next model, and some parts will already be unobtainable as they were designed and manufactured specifically for that model. The part manufacturer will of course be willing to make another production run to meet spares requirements, but probably not in quantities of less than 10,000.
Any spares stocks anywhere in the world are ordered well in advance of need, are paid for and held by distributors and dealers, and unused spares must be eventually thrown away. In the meantime, VAT (in the EU) must be paid periodically on any notional appreciation in the value of the parts, even if they are not sold. Even an unmoving stock of spares therefore requires some maintenance. Original spares are expensive to hold, hence the market in low-quality substitutes. Naturally, the dealers and distributors who do not choose to hold spares can undercut those who do.
3. Repairable products cost more to make and tend to require maintenance. Remember the Minor and the early Minis? They had things called grease nipples fitted to many joints. If new grease was injected every three or six months, the joint would last practically forever. Remember three and six month maintenance schedules? Unfortunately, the cost of specialist labour led to a preference for vehicles with ever-longer service intervals. Who today would buy a car that needed six-month services, let alone three-month ones? Even before that, manufacturers had worked out that joints without grease nipples were cheaper to make than those with, not even counting the cost of the nipple, which contained moving parts. Sealed-for-life joints were cheaper to make and needed no expensive maintenance. The drawback was that they could not be repaired and didn't last more than a few years. By a happy coincidence, a new joint was then required. Not that manufacturers are interested in the life of their vehicles beyond about three years, by which time the second-hand market has little influence on buyers of new cars, who are looking to re-sell in one or two years.
4. Many goods are now made of plastic, making them physically unrepairable. Have you ever succeeded in stopping a leak in a plastic kettle?
5, 6 etc. More reasons, most of which I'm sure you can deduce with a bit of thought. You won't have missed the fact that some reasons are due to goods being manufactured according to the cost-minimising just-in-time philosophy, outside the UK. While deliberate obsolescence exists to a degree, it's rather risky, as the death of an obviously poorly-designed product will *not* lead to a repeat sale by the same manufacturer. The push away from repairable goods is driven almost entirely by the need for reduction of the original sale price, not the expectation of higher repeat sales.
It is still possible to buy some repairable goods, but at a very high price, so restricting them to fairly comfortably-off people. It will again be possible on a large scale only when raw material prices are at least fifty times what they are now (in real terms), and the oil has run out, hence no cheap plastics.
That all sounds like a counsel of despair - the planned obsolescence
boyos will be proud of you!
I've been doing electronics repair work for over thirty years, I do have some idea of what I'm talking about. My particular niche is broadcast television equipment, though medical and avionic equipment is still expensive enough to be worth investing in repair facilities. Nobody touches domestic stuff at a level lower than replacing complete PCBs or at best, obviously burnt bits, while hoping that nothing unburnt is broken. I don't touch it privately, for the reasons above.
And given my profession as a high-tech recycler, I hate throwing anything away. The best of all methods of recycling something is to keep using it. I'll fix anything I can, but I do know my limitations. Unfortunately, I now have to throw away an otherwise perfectly good car, as I don't have the facilities for fixing automatic gearboxes, and the car is worth rather less then the cost of paying people who do. And this is a product designed for reasonably practical repair, it just needs tools and test equipment that few people have or have room for.
I've changed engines and gearboxes in the distant past, and an overdrive on one occasion, but that was before the days when people, and more importantly, governments, demanded low exhaust emissions, ABS, fuel injection, minimum underbonnet space and all the other stuff that makes it very difficult to even get an engine/transmission out of a car today. That kind of thing pretty well started with the Mini, about which nobody has ever had a bad word to say, apart from those of us who had to fix things on them. It's certainly not all the manufacturers' fault.
--
Joe
.
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