Perfect Reliability? The product lasts too long?
In the poem by Oliver Wendall Holmes, The One Hoss Shay, a deacon is confounded by the various parts of his carriage the fail.
And, he decides to do something about it.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an “I dew vum,” or an “I tell yeou,”)
He would build one shay to beat the taown
‘n’ the keounty ‘n’ all the kentry raoun’;
It should be so built that it couldn’ break daown:
“Fer,” said the Deacon, “t’s mighty plain
Thut the weakes’ place mus’ stan’ the strain;
‘n’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.”
Translating from old English, it basically means he wanted to craft a carriage using the best materials and techniques. Later, he built a very sound carriage where every part is just as strong as all the other parts.
And it is a fine craft that works well. It remains as new as the day it was built and outlives the builder.
There is more to the story written in the 1800’s, which you can enjoy.
Stress-strain in the design
The deacon’s idea was to craft each part such that it can “stan’ the strain”.
We do this today with component derating, stress/strain analysis, stress testing, and good engineering practices. Yet, we still have failures.
Since the “shay” outlasted the builder, did it outlast its useful life?
No. The chaise continued to operate for subsequent owners and performed well.
By crafting every part to be as good as any other part, there wasn’t a weakest element of the design.
A carriage, while a complex vehicle in its own right, is not as complex as an automobile today. Just the number of parts and range of functions make the design a much more complex process, yet we use the same approach.
Make each part just good enough to “stan’ the strain”.
Too much longevity
The deacon only made one carriage, and it lasted for 100 years and a day without repair or maintenance.
A thing of beauty. You could say it was over designed and lasted well beyond the expected or useful life.
It may have been bad for the horse carriage business as the owners did not need to purchase another carriage or care about maintenance.
As long as horse-drawn carriages were the preferred mode of transportation, it wasn’t obsolete.
If all carriages were built to such standards and just worked a very long time, would new designs and features have been invented?
Maybe new features would slowly evolve the design, yet just making the basic functions better, there would be little need.
There would be no shopping for a new carriage as the old one was breaking down too often (wear-out, costly to maintain, etc.)
From a carriage-making business point of view, this is a bad thing, to make a product that would guarantee to need to buy another one. That limits the market and profits.
Yet, how long is good enough?
Each product will be different and our ability to define what is long enough is fraught with uncertainty. Wear out prematurely and your customers will go elsewhere.
If it lasts too long, they do not need to come back.
Not to worry
It is rare that we design a product that lasts too long.
Sure it happens and in many cases one or two elements of a product tend to fail first, thus making all the other parts over designed.
The hard part is understanding which part is going to fail when under all the variations of use and environmental conditions.
Ideally, we make every part as good as any other part. Yet it’s hard enough to know if the weakest part is good enough, much less the other 1,000 or so components.
Create designs that are solid and have no life-limiting faults within the expected duration of useful life.
Start there. That is often a much harder challenge than many believe.
If we design and build products as the deacon did, we can then consider how to give up robustness to shorten the operating life.
Until we have that problem, let’s not worry about it too much.
Related:
5 Ways You Know a Reliability Program is Working (article)
10 Ways to Find Reliability Value (article)
Purpose of a Reliability Program (article)
Interesting story!!. thanks for sharing !!. I recently bought a new mobile. It was a brand which I had not used before. So far I had bought Sony and before that Sony Ericsson mobile. I have changed my mobile every 3 years but now I think I would be changing my mobile every 1 year or may be 2 years. The Question is why I bought a new one ? The old one was working fine and all my earlier ones also worked fine. (I know people who have changed them every year or less) The problem was that with the newer apps , constant media upgrades, the memory was simply not enough. Needed better (bigger) LCD display , better camera, more memory to store pictured, music , utility apps etc… So my mobile phone is not simply a phone now!!. It needs to work like a computer , a music box, a camera and what not.!! . My new mobile now costs less than a branded one and has better features (memory, camera, apps). The basic feature remains same (I can make a phone call and send sms). I bought it because I could see that it gave me better value for money. But I would not buy a cheap mobile if my life depended upon it. So I think that some products can afford to be cheap and sometimes have a shorter designed life (reliable but with a shorter life) and some products necessarily have to be reliable over a longer period of use .
It is a matter of understanding well the customers need and how he/she uses the product, impact, the user profile, the technological changes.
Well said Vivek, cheers, Fred