I hear from many people that they believe in this myth:
Manufacturers build ON PURPOSE parts in their products that fail with very high probability after a certain amount of time, e.g. 5 years.
Well I worked now for more than 20 years in the manufacturing electronics industry and I think that the idea failures are "planned" is BS. I've never seen anything that would confirm that idea.
Manufacturers are negligent, yes. But they do not build parts in their products which they KNOW will fail.
From my experience the main reason why electronics fail are:
- sometimes very tight due dates of projects, there is simply no time to develop it properly if you want to have THAT contract
- price, the price needs to be the lowest possible, lower than that of the competition if possible. How do you do that? By using the cheapest possible components, components that are often used at their specification limits. How often did I hear the phrase, "that extreme condition will almost never happen". Sure that doesn't work for military equipment etc, but it surely does work for consumer electronics. The price, and the struggle for companies to undersell their competition is the main reason for weak electronics IMO.
However , if my last statement was true than why can I not be sure to get something of higher quality if I pay more? Is it because of the complexity of todays electronics? Miniaturization?
What do you think?
Manufacturers build ON PURPOSE parts in their products that fail with very high probability after a certain amount of time, e.g. 5 years.
Well I worked now for more than 20 years in the manufacturing electronics industry and I think that the idea failures are "planned" is BS. I've never seen anything that would confirm that idea.
Manufacturers are negligent, yes. But they do not build parts in their products which they KNOW will fail.
From my experience the main reason why electronics fail are:
- sometimes very tight due dates of projects, there is simply no time to develop it properly if you want to have THAT contract
- price, the price needs to be the lowest possible, lower than that of the competition if possible. How do you do that? By using the cheapest possible components, components that are often used at their specification limits. How often did I hear the phrase, "that extreme condition will almost never happen". Sure that doesn't work for military equipment etc, but it surely does work for consumer electronics. The price, and the struggle for companies to undersell their competition is the main reason for weak electronics IMO.
However , if my last statement was true than why can I not be sure to get something of higher quality if I pay more? Is it because of the complexity of todays electronics? Miniaturization?
What do you think?