One wonders if it is an indication of the poor quality of modern global manufacturing?
End-stage Capitalism. It always used to be argued that a free market would always ensure that the most efficient solutions would emerge, and to a certain extent that was true. We had to do a bit of intervention now and again to ensure the worst excesses of the profiteers were curtailed by things like safety standards and employment law, but we are now operating in a materially different environment.
1. The manipulation of the negotiating process. We used to see it all the time when dealing with external consultancies. You'd put out an invitation to tender, and some of the big companies would bid. You'd get an incredibly impressive presentation, a lot of very expensive senior consultant telling you how wonderful and inexpensive a service they could provide, and any attempt to get them to commit to specific prices for specific specifications was always met with an airy wave of "That'll be no problem, we can iron stufff out as we go along". Then when the contract was signed the A team they promised was replaced with loads of keen but incompetent graduates who we used to train, and every possible piece of work was classified as a 'change to spec' and charged extra for. I bet the samples MMC get provided with from contract bidders are orders of magnitude better made than the stuff that get delivered when the contract is in place
2. The loss of competition. There are fewer and fewer genuine manufacturers out there, with less and less choice for the purchaser to go to. 50 years ago there were probably dozens of engineering companies within an hour's drive of Malvern, each of whom would have been capable of providing the necessary services and all of whom would have been competing against each other for the business. Now they are all owned by the same few manufacturing conglomerates and the element of competition doesn't exist.
3. Multiple levels of sub-contracting make it extraordinarily difficult for QA processes to work effectively. Somewhere along the line someone is going to to slip up or deliver sub-standard components and it's not necessarily going to be detected until that component has been incorporated in a few more super-assemblies
4. Poor incentivisation for departmental heads. Many managers are bonused on their team's performance above anything else. A bean-counter gets a win if they can get a supplier to knock another 2% off the bill, and doesn't care that the effect of a lower quality component is paid for by another department. Production is incentivised over and above quality, leading to the inevitable. See something and fix it on the line and it costs £1. Wait for the batch inspector to catch it and it costs £10. Leave for the dealer PDI and it costs £100. Wait for the customer to discover the fault and it costs £1000.
It's very easy to buy crap these days, and bloody difficult to get good stuff. But the good companies are out there. There are a couple of top-end engineering companies in our parish. Both have excellent reputations, full order books and provide a lot of local employment. Both focus on the aerospace field, and I think it's probably because aerospace is one of the last bastions of proper quality engineering.
Tim H. 1986 4/4 VVTi Sport, 2002 LR Defender, 2022 Mini Cooper SE
