This discussion is locked.
You cannot post a reply to this discussion. If you have a question start a new discussion

'Right to repair' gathers force

I'd be interested to canvas other members views on this. My view is "about time" - not for consumers to mend appliances themselves, but for appliances to be designed and manufactured for long service lives. My perspective comes from experience in three different manufacturing industries where longevity was a given, our products were expected to be serviceable for 20 years, and in practice typically lasted considerably more - 30, 40, 50 years. I get very frustrated if a piece of domestic equipment fails in an unserviceable way after, say, 5 years - recently happened with our gas cooker (which was actually pretty naff from day one). Then of course there's the electronic equipment that fails just after the warranty expires - I'd suggest that's completely unacceptable from a resource point of view. We know a huge amount now about design for reliability and design for serviceability, from an ethical point of view shouldn't we be applying this more?


I'm glad to see this article also considers the question of whether we should be encouraged to replace perfectly serviceable equipment in the name of energy efficiency. As it states, this all depends whether the energy expended in producing the equipment and disposing of the old equipment could actually exceeds the potential saving - which I suspect it often does.  


Cheers, Andy
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    This is very easily resolved make it mandatory that the equipment has a min of a 5 year guarantee, then there is an incentive for it to last.
  • A five year guarantee will ensure the equipment is built to last for at least five years - not ten years or 20 years. My mother had a cooker bought in 1962 which she eventually got rid of in 2010 - not because of problems with it but because she was moving to a sheltered flat with a built-in cooker. The original cooker was made to be easy to repair, but modern ones are not. The same goes for cars - we use a local service garage where the owner is committed to keeping cars on the road but finds he is having to tell owners of ten year old cars that they can't be kept going any longer, while our car (bought in 1999 second hand!) has been kept going because it doesn't have the technology working against keeping it running (though sadly as he has now had to start sourcing parts on eBay we have decided it is time to move on).

    I am therefore fully in agreement with Andy's "it's about time"!

    Alasdair
  • Hello All


    The thoughts and recent publicity about "Right to repair" are very true. Older equipment and vehicles were simple enough in their technology for a good technician and a good toolkit to be able to effect repairs and extend the life of the item. This meant of course less disposal, fewer recycling problems and owners being very happy with the products they bought, knew and loved. The level of technology required to keep things running meant that many small businesses were present and most people knew their "local" mechanic or engineer very well. This familiarity also meant that the local expert had an ongoing knowledge of each individual and product - we used to call that community spirit! The trend to ever more reliance on "technology" is seeing these people facing a diminishing market and customer base and so many small businesses are disappearing from the local community. Even the current and "next" generation technicians and engineers have problems maintaining equipment outside their own knowledge and domain. As a profession we as "engineers" were regards as resources to the local community and could often turn our hand to supporting friends and neighbours.

    I would love to see some of the product designers having to service the equipment they have designed so much is now individual components or assemblies which at some stage become items that service and repair is often almost impossible. Perhaps we need to consult the genetic engineers so they can develop humans with extra joint in their arms and even possibly specialist technicians with three hands to reach and hold those inaccessible parts that can only be reached through complete strip down!


    Best wishes to all 'real' engineers who still can do!


    Franckfrown
  • It's about ownership rights and the fair use of the hardware you buy. If I paid for it, I should be able to repair it or have the person of my choice do it for me, otherwise I don't really "own" it nor able to make fair use of it.  There is already too much electronic waste piling up, as users discard their devices rather then fixing them or donating them for re-use.  Less restrictive end user agreements, access to the fair use of repair manuals and diagnostic codes, and availability of spare parts, should be encouraged.
  • I suspect part of the problem has been, particularly in the American market, the fear that someone may be injured while trying to dismantle the item. Special tools are often needed to dismantle a modern appliance for this very reason (to prevent litigation?) which hampers potentially easy repairs, while older appliances are accessible. This rather defeats the intention of having new appliances which are more energy efficient as the ones that have to be replaced are the new efficient ones while the older inefficient ones get repaired and go on and on....

    Alasdair
  • Interesting point Frank - the contrary view is that the added complexity has improved our lives: my wife and I were discussing this earlier, and she mentioned old cars which were fixable by any mechanic (she was partly thinking of an extreme example of Alasdair's example - we have a friend who's recently finished rebuilding a 1912 Model T Ford, we have another who is constantly rebuilding various cars form the '60s for hill climbing), and I did have to say that although repairable they were by modern standards bloomin' dangerous!


    However, with a bit of intelligent engineering I know from experience that it's possible to design products and systems that are both complex and repairable. A very common problem is electronics obsolescence, and at a component level that is a challenge, but at a "black box" level replaceable parts can be made if manufacturers decide to / see the need to / have to.

     

    It would be interesting if consumer product manufacturers had to produce MTBF figures for their products (I'm thinking white goods and similar here), perhaps on a simple banded scale like energy efficiency. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that they would find huge consumer pressure towards those with the better figures.


    On Alasdair's point, fortunately the special tools are nearly always available on eBay smiley It's very rare that I've found a piece of electronics which I haven't been able to get into. If all else fails my trusty collection of power tools gets there in the end...


    On which point, a conundrum: over the last couple of years I've bought a couple of power tools from a well known and highly regarded manufacturer (with a three year warranty), both failed within the warranty period. As far as getting me going again the manufacturer's service was faultless: they arranged collection for the next day, and within a couple of days decided in both cases that the tool was unrepairable and immediately provided me with a new one. I'm torn about this - I really appreciate the customer service, but I wished they'd made tools which a) didn't break down and b) were rapidly repairable if they did! Particularly frustrating as one of these was a jigsaw that I bought to replace a £5 own-brand jigsaw from a DIY chain which is still working (albeit in a slightly wobbly way) after 15 years of hard use.  


    Endnote: As a surprise Christmas present for my wife I repaired and refurbished her beloved old 1960s Decca transistor radio which had been sitting broken in our loft for years. I've still got a bit of tweaking to do on it - slightly daunting as I've never aligned an FM radio before, but I know I will be able to do it (I have a donor set should I damage any of the pot cores). Meanwhile we seem to have an ever growing collection of partially or fully broken DAB radios...


    Many thanks all for the excellent comments!


    Cheers,


    Andy

  • It would be interesting if consumer product manufacturers had to produce MTBF figures for their products (I'm thinking white goods and similar here), perhaps on a simple banded scale like energy efficiency. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that they would find huge consumer pressure towards those with the better figures.



    My worry then is that manufacturers would be driven to produce equipment that has a higher MTBF, but is impossible to repair.  If you replace connectors with soldered or crimped joins, and screws with glue, rivets or spot welds, then you avoid all the risks of things working loose and failing.  But the equipment would be much more difficult to repair.  This already seems to be the case with many smart phones, which are expensive yet disposable.


    Perhaps we also need the MTTR (mean time to repair) as well.
  • Andy,

    I am aware the tools are available - it is just that by making specialised tools necessary it makes repair a bit more protracted, and more expensive if you have to buy extra tools. Who will buy the right tools for £15 is a replacement item costs £16. (Of course you will win in the long term, but that isn't the point.)

    Simon,

    I think you are right about MTTR. I am currently reviewing a report which is specifying both MTBF and MTTF as these need to be considered together.

    Alasdair
  • Yes, that's a really interesting point re MTBF / MTTR. From an electronics point of view decent quality connectors are one item that can hugely push up costs - the connectors can end up costing more than the rest of the electronics, and yet still be the weakest point. There's no "right" answer to that one, I think it's a case for pushing for it at least to be considered.


    I heard a couple of years back, from a friend who used to manage a semiconductor fabrication plant, that the latest "low nanometer" processes resulted in devices with relatively short lives - years rather than tens of years - due to neutron(?) bombardment, I don't know how much of a real risk this is? (And might have misremembered those vague details.) 

     

    (My bit of string (literally) has just arrived in the post so that I can repair another of our old radios - classic case with our kitchen radio where the tuning knob went round and round and nothing happened...) 


    Cheers,


    Andy

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Hi Andy and others

    I totally agree - all medium and large domestic products should be repairable. The 'Right to Repair' should be enforced by legislation as soon as possible. The problem is we have very few, if any, in parliament who are professional Engineers and so cannot really understand the technicalities involved (compare this situation with say France or Germany). I have a Karcher vacuum scraper (German design) which is repairable, and I must replace its battery.... not sure about my iPad which is in need of the same treatment.

    As a thought experiment let's go say 50 years into the future; if we don't repair we will be running out of materials, denuding the earth of resources and possibly having even more mountains of plastic (= serious problems). We all know repair is the way to go, it just needs us to form a strong enough lobby to influence our government for the good of our children and grandchildren. Besides, I enjoy taking things apart, now getting them back together in working order - THAT'S the challenge!

    Is it worth writing to our MPs, do you think?

    Martin Letts