I think 6-sigma was a GE initiative but I might be wrong. US companies have produced great products over the decades and will continue to do so, but on listed companies there is too much focus on stock price and not enough on the rest of the business and I’m afraid that trickles down ultimately into how the company ends up getting run. Boards are held to random by investors and the fact that as executives get big stock incentives. I’m afraid in many cases building great products, customer care and the rest of what makes a great company is subverted to that.
Loose parts seem to be a Boeing specialty these days.
They were/are contracted to build a fleet of modern tankers (KC46 I think, based on the 767?) for the air force and delivery has been delayed for years since every time they tried to deliver one the air force found loose parts and shoddy finishing on top of design flaws. Boeing accrued a billion or so in fines from the US government over that. It should have been operational in 2016, I think it was finally approved late last year and caused losses of $5 billion for Boeing.
I saw an interview with someone who said he wasnt surprised by these failures as he said Boeing were cutting corners to get airplanes out of the door
as fast as possible. I believe they have been late in delivery on most models and could face penalties. What he said was happening is that certain inspections
which take time were no longer being done. If thats the case what are the FAA doing ? I thought the FAA had to sign off each aircraft before issuing a COA.
as fast as possible. I believe they have been late in delivery on most models and could face penalties. What he said was happening is that certain inspections
which take time were no longer being done. If thats the case what are the FAA doing ? I thought the FAA had to sign off each aircraft before issuing a COA.
Yup. Can't build a widget without an army of MBAs and lawyers telling you how to do it.
It is sad but true that everything in the store is junk. But it wasn't always like that. I remember when my father sold the house (1990s). There was a shelf full of appliances my parents used when they first got married in the 1950s. We threw it all out, but they still worked. Now I can't get two years out of a coffemaker. I literally keep a spare so when it quits I will still have coffee that morning. Ditto with the sump pump. Every time I had to replace the sump pump, there was only one on the shelves at the store. That's because every time there's a big rain, a bunch of them fail and everybody runs to the store and buys a new one.
The stuff I design and build will last a lifetime. It's true craftsmanship. Craftsmanship is still around, but you have to pay for it.
There's always a business that will buy your house in a downturn, regardless of condition. Every time prices tank and people bail, lots of houses end up in the hands of these businesses. There is a tipping point where so many houses become sleazy rentals (there's two on my block) that your neighborhood will be ruined.
Luckily there's huge demand for houses in my area for now, so they won't get too mush of a toehold in the market. But look at what happened to Gulf Shores, Alabama. Gulf Shores was built as a vacation community. Tidy little houses were built and marketed at a reasonable price. It didn't take too long for a bunch of them to end up as rental houses. Now pretty much every other house in Gulf Shores is a crackhouse or whorehouse. It's not exactly a desirable destination for middle class vacationers any more. And if you bought a house there to vacation, it will probably end up with squatters in there. Plus your nice little vacation house is worth caca.
When it comes to appliances the ones which spring to mind for being well crafted are Miele washing machines, Liebherr fridges and Dualit toasters.
Generally I resorted to buying kitchen appliances from professional catering equipment suppliers for exactly the reasons you pointed out.
This is very much on point. Capitalism for the people, socialism for the corporations.
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"Buyers are Liars" was the phrase I heard from a real estate guy once. People say they want this and that in a house but end up buying something different. So lots of folk lament the poor lifetime/quality of modern goods but they won't pay for better stuff, they want cheap, so they buy cheap and the companies selling the cheap stuff prosper - natural selection. Same with voters - they want governments to 'protect jobs' and national interests, which in the short term means bail outs. We get what we pay for, who we vote for. There's nobody else to blame.
Here's what I see - as I recall, if you make a donation, ads are removed for like a year or so and you get a few other priviledges, but it's been a while since I donated:
ETA: To be ALMOST on-topic, TEMU also sells electronic parts (I've seen 1k+ qty resistor kits, and for a lot less than on ebay!), but I have no intention of ordering anything from this company.
ETA: To be ALMOST on-topic, TEMU also sells electronic parts (I've seen 1k+ qty resistor kits, and for a lot less than on ebay!), but I have no intention of ordering anything from this company.
I've considered ad blockers, but with the advent of TEMU (apparenty wants to be the next Amazon, but with lower prices, values, everything) I think it's interesting to see the messages various entities are paying to put in front of me.
Here's another (this may have been from FB, I forget), why is she winking at me ...
Here's another (this may have been from FB, I forget), why is she winking at me ...
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Clickbait. I had my site signed up for Google ads and got about $10 for 6 months of clicks. Then I was thinking, since it's 99% guys that visit my site because its electronics, most of them are not going to click on an ad for cheap resistors or side cutters are they? They already have that stuff. But if they came to my site and Google decided to put up Victoria's Secret ads, I'd get 10's of thousands of clicks. So I dropped the Google ad thing - it was in the final analysis a PITA for the visitors and for me for virtually no payback.
Funny - I have an MBA but at one stage I was the ONLY guy on the business management team who could read a schematic and talk confidently about circuits at any level. Of course, the people in my team were different - they were highly competent EE's and solid-state PhD physicists. So, the question is, how do people that have no appreciation of the technical challenges of complex systems like aircraft and semiconductors get to run large corporations or businesses within those corporations?
Which they do in part because its the law. Judicial law, but still law.
A bit of history:
https://medium.com/swlh/the-shareholder-v-stakeholder-contrast-a-brief-history-c5a6cfcaa111
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