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I'm actually shocked at this article's underlying message, which seems to be implying that since engineering perfection is unobtainable, good enough within the

I'm actually shocked at this article's underlying message, which seems to be implying that since engineering perfection is unobtainable, good enough within the given time and material constraints is acceptable and these recall issues were more of a PR problem. Ford and Toyota are companies that generates billions of dollars in profit. Think about that. It in no way realistically ran into any constraints that were not arbitrary. You can hire more engineers. You can hire better engineers. This is not a question of a scrappy start up needing to release something or go bust. I'm not anti-capitalism. I understand companies run into actual, real constraints that prevent perfection. But do we care that the defects and safety issues are dwarfed by poor driving? How are these self imposed 'constraints' on engineering anything but maximizing shareholder value at the expense of public safety?

bryanlarsen 11y ago
Profit per car for car manufacturers is often under $1000 per car. That's not even close to enough money for perfection.
- bronson 11y ago
  Are profit and perfection correlated? Seems unlikely.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Inversely correlated. Perfection costs.
    - bronson 11y ago
      Apple is an obvious counterexample (high perfection and high profit). Sure, perfection costs more, but does that directly affect profit?
sliverstorm 11y ago
It in no way realistically ran into any constraints that were not arbitrary. You seem to think that every constraint in the world can be removed by more money.
- jotux 11y ago
  Generally more design time and more money can remove most constraints -- you just end up with a product no one is willing to purchase.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    Which renders it all moot as the goal is to produce product that actually get used. Fantasy products are impractical due to costs and generally a lot of other assumptions. Toyota got known for cars that were good and cheap but not so fast in the 70's and 80's. Their cars quite simply did not break down. Detroit made cars that were not as good, but were quite fast and comparable in price. Way different set of tradeoffs. One was utilitarian and efficient and reasonably safe. The other was VROOM! A look at the odometers from that period revealed very few manufacturers bothered with anything over 99,999 miles. Many American cars would not go that distance without requiring some very significant service, or encountering some critical failure. Timing belt, pump, etc... The Toyota cars would go much longer times between failures, and those tradeoffs have played out in the market. Today, big American cars aren't as cheap, they still are pretty fast, and pretty good. I've an SUV that's going to demonstrate a service life profile very similar to that old '89 Corolla, both of which I probably won't retire until 400K miles. The vehicles are that good now. So that triangle can bend, and it's not binary as others have mentioned. It's a continuum where a whole bunch of things are always moving and changing. The other thing about time and money is how the markets play out. Sometimes it's good. Apple took that path a few times and ended up with nice margins and in some cases great share. In other cases, modest share, but margins that are worth it. Fair enough. Other times, being that late to market may well render the time and money expense moot as the use value is already being actualized in other products, leaving a superior entry with a saturated market that has very little incentive to purchase again.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
msandford 11y ago
> which seems to be implying that since engineering perfection is unobtainable It is unobtainable. Full stop. The end. No amount of money thrown at a problem can absolutely, positively, 100% guarantee safety. Even if you had a car that cost $1b it still wouldn't be perfect. It might have a perfect safety record but that's because there would only be 500 drivers on the road worldwide and at that kind of a very, very sparse distribution cars might only pass one another a few times per day. It might take years or decades for enough car-to-car interactions to take place to find the remaining weak spots in the billion dollar car to ensure that it didn't accidentally kill someone. But in the mean time you'd make millions if not billions of people poorer for not having the ability to drive cars which exist in the realm of affordability. Nearly everything is always about time and material (and monetary) constraints. If it wasn't we'd all own skyscrapers and have private yachts and vacation all the time and etc, etc, etc. > Ford and Toyota are companies that generates billions of dollars in profit. And? Ford has $53b of "property, plant and equipment" and on that $53b it made a profit of $5b in 2012, $7b in 2013 and $3b in 2014. That averages out to $5b or a little under 10% annualized yield. Since automobile design and manufacturing is a little more complicated than real estate, so it shouldn't be surprising that the yield is higher. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=F+Balance+Sheet&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=F+Balance+Sheet&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=F+Income+Statement&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=F+Income+Statement&annual
- douche 11y ago
  I was trying to explain this concept to our sales rep today. He seems to think that releasing a product means that it is 100% finished and there will never be any problems with it ever. Reality is that we are always one bizarre untested configuration away from having an issue on a new install. The terms "Beta" and "Gold" have this magical aspect for some classes of people, which I just can't get my head around, seeing the trunk code change every day.
- Tomte 11y ago
  That's why ALARP is such a widely used methodology. Unless you're in the bands "unacceptable risk" or "broadly acceptable risk", economical considerations are valid.
douche 11y ago
This seems to be analogous to the Iron Triangle rule: Fast, Cheap or Good, pick two. You could optimize for perfect engineering, maybe (real-life throws in lots of random, exceptional events, though), but its going to cost you up the wazoo and take forever to finish.
- antod 11y ago
  Agreed, but with engineering though it's never that binary. Each dimension is a continuum. You have to end up picking some point on each dimension that is either good enough or the best you can do with your budget also considering that you have to balance this across many many individual decisions. Prioritising these decisions against each other is also done with incomplete information. As mentioned in the article engineered items are not in a binary state of faulty or not faulty - it's more 'analog' with physical engineering. Rather they have varying degrees of resilience to different often competing failure modes. And changing requirements can also alter whether something is regarded as adequate or inadequate - eg earthquake strengthening standards for older buildings are a good example. Engineering isn't about perfection (it can't be), it's about designing solutions that satisfy requirements and specifications as best as possible within constraints while juggling inevitable tradeoffs.
kansface 11y ago
Constraints often involve tradeoffs as opposed to money. I don't know much about cars, but I am an active rock climber. Climbing is probably unique in that these sorts of engineering tradeoffs concerning life and death are part of the sport. Perhaps the best example is found in the gear used and its placement. Cords, slings, and webbing (short pieces of tubing or cord used to build anchors or fix gear) were typically made of nylon back in the day. Military grade plastics [1] entered the climbing scene by the 90s. These plastics are both much stronger and lighter than nylon. For that matter, they are actually stronger than steel. In practice, they are so much stronger that they don't stretch at all. The obvious effect is that falls exert a much larger force on both the climber and the gear. Gear rarely fails, but it does punch holes through rock ripping its way out. The other effect is that dyneema effectively sheds redundancy from anchors. A bit of background is in order. Anchors are typically attached to the rock via more than one piece of pro(tection). A cordelette (short cord 20 feet in length) is attached to all the pro and tied into a knot (the master point). Depending on the position of the pro, the legs of the cordelette can be doubled (or more) to make a stronger anchor. A cordelette made of nylon stretches enough that the total weight it holds is nearly additive of the number of independent legs. Dyneema, on the other hand, will break at the tensile strength of a single leg no matter what. In the concrete, 5mm dyneema may hold up to 5000 pounds, while a 7mm nylon cord will hold 2800 pounds or so per leg. In most cases, an anchor of nylon is both stronger and more forgiving because it stretches more. If we didn't have enough to consider already, space age plastics rapidly loose strength under very moderate weighting cycles and degrade quickly in the sun. Which plastic is better? Or better yet, which one would you use? Nylon means falls are typically safer, but you are more likely to take a fall because you will fatigue more quickly. Of course, if you can hit the deck (eg, a ledge below you) or can't double up the cord, you'd want to use dyneema. However, I certainly wouldn't want to take multiple falls in succession on dyneema. | Think about that. It in no way realistically ran into any constraints that were not arbitrary. More engineers, better engineers, and more money can't solve this problem. You have to pick your cords ahead of time and live (or not) with the decision. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_pol...
- andrewmb 11y ago
breischl 11y ago
Just out of curiosity, what would be the perfect car? I mean, perfect while still being obtainable within the laws of physics as we understand them. Even if money was no object, you can't build a car that is 100% optimal in every aspect. Every change you make causes a tradeoff elsewhere. Adding armor helps in some collisions, but it just got heavier and slower to stop so it's less safe in other situations. Move the gas tank up higher to avoid that rear collision problem, and now the center of gravity is higher so it won't corner as well and might roll over more easily.
- douche 11y ago
  A 1980s style pickup with the bodywork replaced with aluminum or fiberglass would probably last forever. I've known many 80s Ford or Toyoras to be very fixable after the original engines quit. Ususually, at least in the north-east, the snow and salt rots out vehicles bef0re they really get to junk level
  - lambdaelite 11y ago
    Or a '90s 4-banger Nissan Hardbody with a manual transmission. My father has one and there's a list of people waiting to buy it off him if he's ever willing to sell. Those things are great.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    On the west coast, those cars run forever. My old '89 Corolla has something like 350K miles on it. Runs great, drives great, 40 MPG, and it's got a throttle body fuel delivery too. Insane! It's possible for a person to almost completely disassemble, understand and reassemble and modify a car from that era. People do it all the time.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

Profit per car for car manufacturers is often under $1000 per car. That's not even close to enough money for perfection.

bronson 11y ago
Are profit and perfection correlated? Seems unlikely.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Inversely correlated. Perfection costs.
  - bronson 11y ago
    Apple is an obvious counterexample (high perfection and high profit). Sure, perfection costs more, but does that directly affect profit?

sliverstorm 11y ago

It in no way realistically ran into any constraints that were not arbitrary. You seem to think that every constraint in the world can be removed by more money.

jotux 11y ago
Generally more design time and more money can remove most constraints -- you just end up with a product no one is willing to purchase.
- ddingus 11y ago
  Which renders it all moot as the goal is to produce product that actually get used. Fantasy products are impractical due to costs and generally a lot of other assumptions. Toyota got known for cars that were good and cheap but not so fast in the 70's and 80's. Their cars quite simply did not break down. Detroit made cars that were not as good, but were quite fast and comparable in price. Way different set of tradeoffs. One was utilitarian and efficient and reasonably safe. The other was VROOM! A look at the odometers from that period revealed very few manufacturers bothered with anything over 99,999 miles. Many American cars would not go that distance without requiring some very significant service, or encountering some critical failure. Timing belt, pump, etc... The Toyota cars would go much longer times between failures, and those tradeoffs have played out in the market. Today, big American cars aren't as cheap, they still are pretty fast, and pretty good. I've an SUV that's going to demonstrate a service life profile very similar to that old '89 Corolla, both of which I probably won't retire until 400K miles. The vehicles are that good now. So that triangle can bend, and it's not binary as others have mentioned. It's a continuum where a whole bunch of things are always moving and changing. The other thing about time and money is how the markets play out. Sometimes it's good. Apple took that path a few times and ended up with nice margins and in some cases great share. In other cases, modest share, but margins that are worth it. Fair enough. Other times, being that late to market may well render the time and money expense moot as the use value is already being actualized in other products, leaving a superior entry with a saturated market that has very little incentive to purchase again.
- sliverstorm 11y ago

msandford 11y ago

> which seems to be implying that since engineering perfection is unobtainable It is unobtainable. Full stop. The end. No amount of money thrown at a problem can absolutely, positively, 100% guarantee safety. Even if you had a car that cost $1b it still wouldn't be perfect. It might have a perfect safety record but that's because there would only be 500 drivers on the road worldwide and at that kind of a very, very sparse distribution cars might only pass one another a few times per day. It might take years or decades for enough car-to-car interactions to take place to find the remaining weak spots in the billion dollar car to ensure that it didn't accidentally kill someone. But in the mean time you'd make millions if not billions of people poorer for not having the ability to drive cars which exist in the realm of affordability. Nearly everything is always about time and material (and monetary) constraints. If it wasn't we'd all own skyscrapers and have private yachts and vacation all the time and etc, etc, etc. > Ford and Toyota are companies that generates billions of dollars in profit. And? Ford has $53b of "property, plant and equipment" and on that $53b it made a profit of $5b in 2012, $7b in 2013 and $3b in 2014. That averages out to $5b or a little under 10% annualized yield. Since automobile design and manufacturing is a little more complicated than real estate, so it shouldn't be surprising that the yield is higher. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=F+Balance+Sheet&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=F+Balance+Sheet&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=F+Income+Statement&annual http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=F+Income+Statement&annual

douche 11y ago
I was trying to explain this concept to our sales rep today. He seems to think that releasing a product means that it is 100% finished and there will never be any problems with it ever. Reality is that we are always one bizarre untested configuration away from having an issue on a new install. The terms "Beta" and "Gold" have this magical aspect for some classes of people, which I just can't get my head around, seeing the trunk code change every day.
Tomte 11y ago
That's why ALARP is such a widely used methodology. Unless you're in the bands "unacceptable risk" or "broadly acceptable risk", economical considerations are valid.

douche 11y ago

This seems to be analogous to the Iron Triangle rule: Fast, Cheap or Good, pick two. You could optimize for perfect engineering, maybe (real-life throws in lots of random, exceptional events, though), but its going to cost you up the wazoo and take forever to finish.

antod 11y ago
Agreed, but with engineering though it's never that binary. Each dimension is a continuum. You have to end up picking some point on each dimension that is either good enough or the best you can do with your budget also considering that you have to balance this across many many individual decisions. Prioritising these decisions against each other is also done with incomplete information. As mentioned in the article engineered items are not in a binary state of faulty or not faulty - it's more 'analog' with physical engineering. Rather they have varying degrees of resilience to different often competing failure modes. And changing requirements can also alter whether something is regarded as adequate or inadequate - eg earthquake strengthening standards for older buildings are a good example. Engineering isn't about perfection (it can't be), it's about designing solutions that satisfy requirements and specifications as best as possible within constraints while juggling inevitable tradeoffs.

kansface 11y ago

Constraints often involve tradeoffs as opposed to money. I don't know much about cars, but I am an active rock climber. Climbing is probably unique in that these sorts of engineering tradeoffs concerning life and death are part of the sport. Perhaps the best example is found in the gear used and its placement. Cords, slings, and webbing (short pieces of tubing or cord used to build anchors or fix gear) were typically made of nylon back in the day. Military grade plastics [1] entered the climbing scene by the 90s. These plastics are both much stronger and lighter than nylon. For that matter, they are actually stronger than steel. In practice, they are so much stronger that they don't stretch at all. The obvious effect is that falls exert a much larger force on both the climber and the gear. Gear rarely fails, but it does punch holes through rock ripping its way out. The other effect is that dyneema effectively sheds redundancy from anchors. A bit of background is in order. Anchors are typically attached to the rock via more than one piece of pro(tection). A cordelette (short cord 20 feet in length) is attached to all the pro and tied into a knot (the master point). Depending on the position of the pro, the legs of the cordelette can be doubled (or more) to make a stronger anchor. A cordelette made of nylon stretches enough that the total weight it holds is nearly additive of the number of independent legs. Dyneema, on the other hand, will break at the tensile strength of a single leg no matter what. In the concrete, 5mm dyneema may hold up to 5000 pounds, while a 7mm nylon cord will hold 2800 pounds or so per leg. In most cases, an anchor of nylon is both stronger and more forgiving because it stretches more. If we didn't have enough to consider already, space age plastics rapidly loose strength under very moderate weighting cycles and degrade quickly in the sun. Which plastic is better? Or better yet, which one would you use? Nylon means falls are typically safer, but you are more likely to take a fall because you will fatigue more quickly. Of course, if you can hit the deck (eg, a ledge below you) or can't double up the cord, you'd want to use dyneema. However, I certainly wouldn't want to take multiple falls in succession on dyneema. | Think about that. It in no way realistically ran into any constraints that were not arbitrary. More engineers, better engineers, and more money can't solve this problem. You have to pick your cords ahead of time and live (or not) with the decision. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_pol...

andrewmb 11y ago

breischl 11y ago

Just out of curiosity, what would be the perfect car? I mean, perfect while still being obtainable within the laws of physics as we understand them. Even if money was no object, you can't build a car that is 100% optimal in every aspect. Every change you make causes a tradeoff elsewhere. Adding armor helps in some collisions, but it just got heavier and slower to stop so it's less safe in other situations. Move the gas tank up higher to avoid that rear collision problem, and now the center of gravity is higher so it won't corner as well and might roll over more easily.

douche 11y ago
A 1980s style pickup with the bodywork replaced with aluminum or fiberglass would probably last forever. I've known many 80s Ford or Toyoras to be very fixable after the original engines quit. Ususually, at least in the north-east, the snow and salt rots out vehicles bef0re they really get to junk level
- lambdaelite 11y ago
  Or a '90s 4-banger Nissan Hardbody with a manual transmission. My father has one and there's a list of people waiting to buy it off him if he's ever willing to sell. Those things are great.
- ddingus 11y ago
  On the west coast, those cars run forever. My old '89 Corolla has something like 350K miles on it. Runs great, drives great, 40 MPG, and it's got a throttle body fuel delivery too. Insane! It's possible for a person to almost completely disassemble, understand and reassemble and modify a car from that era. People do it all the time.