The smell of a burning motor. Again.
04 June 2007
Here’s a thought for you – how many suppliers do you, as an individual, feel you have a ‘partnership’ with? I don’t mean in your corporate role buying placement machines or solder paste or flying probe testers – I mean you as an individual. A consumer.
The reason for this thought came after another of my regular ‘electrical nightmares’. These usually occur around once a month. Everything electrical in my house is new, or at least under two years old. This is not out of any desire to be at the cutting edge of technology or that inherent masculine tendency to gravitate towards the latest gadget, even if we don’t understand or need it. This has been out of necessity. Everything electrical (by which of course I mean electronic) I have I manage to destroy, normally just after the warranty expires. This is also not because I buy the cheapest. Sometimes I do and these items tend to have the same limited lifespan as some of the premium brands that I have also flirted with. My current nightmare, initiated by that all-too-familiar smell of a burnt out motor, is my washing machine – a mid-range brand that has not even had the decency to limp past the year mark. And when I replace it, it will not be with the same brand because that brand has demonstrated to me that it can’t be trusted. In my house the nearest I come to brand loyalty is a cupboard full of Canon cameras of different generations – nothing else, be it phones, TV’s, kitchen appliances, have given me any reason to rely on any single manufacturer’s products.
Which takes me back to my initial point. Who are your trusted suppliers? Possibly because of the industry we work in and because we have seen the assembly machines mature in quality and reliability, I suspect most of you feel like I do – they are all much the same. And the reason for that is, as I said earlier, if it breaks prematurely then I have no contact with the manufacturer to convey my thoughts. But this could all change with the forthcoming European WEEE (Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive, which charges all suppliers to take back their equipment at end of life and dispose of it responsibly. Despite the huge ignorance of the consequences of this from both customers and manufacturers, in time I think it may actually change the relationship between the two. There are two simple reasons for this. One is that potentially a manufacturer will have, lets take for example – a broken down washing machine, figuratively left on his doorstep. The manufacturer is therefore taking on cost (the disposal of the washing machine) but has also lost the custom of the washing machine’s last owner. Money is therefore going out and none will come back in, which in the long term is unsustainable. The second, related, reason is that there is now contact between the customer and the supplier at the machine’s end-of-life. And if the supplier is worth his salt then he will not lose the opportunity of trying to retain that customer in the future.
Is it so far fetched that consumers (as we all are) expect the same commitment from our suppliers of household goods that we, as engineers, expect from the suppliers of our assembly equipment? If the component placement machine breaks then the supplier fixes or replaces it, partly because they are obliged to, but more importantly because they need to keep the customer happy if they are to keep the customer.
It could be that an unexpected side-benefit of the WEEE Directive is that it is instrumental in making suppliers appreciate that their customers have choices and that they can influence those choices even when their products have reached the end of their lives.
But despite the thoughts above, there is no substitute for quality. It may be that I have been lucky, and I am sure that other manufacturers produce excellent products, but the reason why I have stuck with a single brand of camera is because I have had no need to contact the company. Products that work are a far better reason for sticking with a company than how you manage products that don’t.
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