A lot of people are just throwing around planned obsolescence and the intent to make you replace things every x years or so. But I think those are just happy side effects of other contributing factors that are at play...
So no company has ever started out saying, let's make a product that is just good enough to last until our next one comes out. They start out trying to make the best, the best thing they can possibly make to break into the market. For example let's say a company want to make a toaster. They have to compete with other already existing toaster companies so they have to build a better more robust toaster that maybe even costs a little more than the competition, but they can get away with it because they can market it as a well built premium toaster. So years go on and their toaster is selling pretty well and sales start out pacing production because they are slicing market share from the competition toaster as they eventually break and customers switch brands to one that is more durable. So the company has to figure out a way to make more and more toasters, in the same amount of time, you can speed up the assembly lines, but that might affect quality as workers have to work faster and might make more mistakes. You could make a second assembly line, but that is very expensive because you have to effectively double your factory footprint. Either option also creates more demand for your upstream suppliers. If you require more parts from them, they also have to make the same decision you just made, work faster or expand. Even if you dictate that whatever they do they have to maintain the same level of quality of parts the supply, they may increase piece prices on you. So ultimately, the decision comes down to, decrease quality, or increase price. You can increase price in some situations, and maintain the quality, but at some point the market can only bear price increases to a certain point and it will collapse. Usually the safer and chewper option is to take the quality hit and pay to repair or replace the units that make it out defective.
Now, at some point the company will reach an equilibrium where demand and production levels out. This is where the problems with capitalism start making their way in. If the company is publicly traded or has investors that want infinite money, they aren't going to be content just existing I'm this steady state where they just churn out toasters and make a small but reliable stream of money. They see a flat line of profit as losing. So in come people looking to either chop heads on the assembly line, or cut costs of raw materials. Both reduce quality in various ways and over enough iterations this is how products decline in quality over years. I think planned obsolescence comes into play here, but I think most of the time that is just a side effect of iterations of cost reduction over many years. I think it very rarely comes up in meetings or is actively done in product designing.
jivemasta t1_izp2lna wrote
Reply to What makes one product cheap junk that breaks in a week and another that lasts a lifetime? by SirCheeseAlot
A lot of people are just throwing around planned obsolescence and the intent to make you replace things every x years or so. But I think those are just happy side effects of other contributing factors that are at play...
So no company has ever started out saying, let's make a product that is just good enough to last until our next one comes out. They start out trying to make the best, the best thing they can possibly make to break into the market. For example let's say a company want to make a toaster. They have to compete with other already existing toaster companies so they have to build a better more robust toaster that maybe even costs a little more than the competition, but they can get away with it because they can market it as a well built premium toaster. So years go on and their toaster is selling pretty well and sales start out pacing production because they are slicing market share from the competition toaster as they eventually break and customers switch brands to one that is more durable. So the company has to figure out a way to make more and more toasters, in the same amount of time, you can speed up the assembly lines, but that might affect quality as workers have to work faster and might make more mistakes. You could make a second assembly line, but that is very expensive because you have to effectively double your factory footprint. Either option also creates more demand for your upstream suppliers. If you require more parts from them, they also have to make the same decision you just made, work faster or expand. Even if you dictate that whatever they do they have to maintain the same level of quality of parts the supply, they may increase piece prices on you. So ultimately, the decision comes down to, decrease quality, or increase price. You can increase price in some situations, and maintain the quality, but at some point the market can only bear price increases to a certain point and it will collapse. Usually the safer and chewper option is to take the quality hit and pay to repair or replace the units that make it out defective.
Now, at some point the company will reach an equilibrium where demand and production levels out. This is where the problems with capitalism start making their way in. If the company is publicly traded or has investors that want infinite money, they aren't going to be content just existing I'm this steady state where they just churn out toasters and make a small but reliable stream of money. They see a flat line of profit as losing. So in come people looking to either chop heads on the assembly line, or cut costs of raw materials. Both reduce quality in various ways and over enough iterations this is how products decline in quality over years. I think planned obsolescence comes into play here, but I think most of the time that is just a side effect of iterations of cost reduction over many years. I think it very rarely comes up in meetings or is actively done in product designing.