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The last time I paid a general appliance repairman to fix my dishwasher, he replaced it with a nonstandard part. It semi-functioned for another couple years, bu

The last time I paid a general appliance repairman to fix my dishwasher, he replaced it with a nonstandard part. It semi-functioned for another couple years, but it generally had a hard time self-cleaning its own filter, which lead to lots of strange and persistent problems. Eventually, the dishwasher failed, causing a leak that required a lot of the flooring around it to be replaced. I should have just purchased a new dishwasher at the time that GE's planned obsolescence part failed, right at the end of its warranty period. So, what the article misses is that a lot of the suppression of maintenance providers is related to how our intellectual property regime has been crafted. The statutes and case law give corporations enormous power that they did not really have in previous eras to control supply chains and documentation. There are other factors feeding into this, but if you are looking for a solution to this set of issues it lies within IP reform first and foremost, although that would have its own set of tradeoffs and consequences.

bombcar 4y ago
Designing for maintenance often means designing for failure; for example, I want to design my kitchen under the assumption the dishwasher will fail and flood the room, such that it drains safely away without causing damage.
- ticviking 4y ago
  Sure, the consequence of our IP regime is that there is a temptation to design to milk those failures as a revenue source. With a different IP regime one could imagine incentives that allowed a "right to repair" where IP violation done as a part of a owner commissioned repair were widely accepted or a manufacturer forfeit's the IP when they cease stocking the part defined as "admit they don't stock it" or "do not have it in stock for 6 total months of a year"
- mjevans 4y ago
  Then your kitchen (and laundry room, etc) would have to be properly designed and built, with drains, and a floor sloped to them, waterproof and mold proof materials. Maybe even a sub-panel so the major appliances and each wall outlet were each on their own circuit and you could plug in a waffle maker and toaster oven on the same wall without popping a circuit breaker.
Tangurena2 4y ago
When Welch was CEO at GE, one of his commandments was that there had to be profit centers everywhere. If the "service department" could not figure out how to become a profit center, then he got rid of it. Because Wall Street and all the business journals worshipped Welch, his ideas spread like cancer throughout the corporate world.

bombcar 4y ago

Designing for maintenance often means designing for failure; for example, I want to design my kitchen under the assumption the dishwasher will fail and flood the room, such that it drains safely away without causing damage.

ticviking 4y ago
Sure, the consequence of our IP regime is that there is a temptation to design to milk those failures as a revenue source. With a different IP regime one could imagine incentives that allowed a "right to repair" where IP violation done as a part of a owner commissioned repair were widely accepted or a manufacturer forfeit's the IP when they cease stocking the part defined as "admit they don't stock it" or "do not have it in stock for 6 total months of a year"
mjevans 4y ago
Then your kitchen (and laundry room, etc) would have to be properly designed and built, with drains, and a floor sloped to them, waterproof and mold proof materials. Maybe even a sub-panel so the major appliances and each wall outlet were each on their own circuit and you could plug in a waffle maker and toaster oven on the same wall without popping a circuit breaker.

Tangurena2 4y ago

When Welch was CEO at GE, one of his commandments was that there had to be profit centers everywhere. If the "service department" could not figure out how to become a profit center, then he got rid of it. Because Wall Street and all the business journals worshipped Welch, his ideas spread like cancer throughout the corporate world.