Fit the First

This week, the hot water heater in my basement started leaking. When I got it in September 2003, it came with a six-year warranty. I was happy that it lasted over eight years until the technician who installed the new one yesterday told me a story.

Several years back he replaced a water heater for an elderly man who wanted to upgrade his home before putting it on the market. The water heater was 60 years old and worked perfectly well, but the owner thought a new one would make the place more saleable. The tech took the old water heater home and installed it there, and has been using it ever since.

When I asked why such an old appliance continued to work so well, he said that once upon a time, water heaters had stainless steel, copper, or monel metal tanks that did not rust. Water heaters made in the last few decades mostly have porcelain-coated steel water tanks (like your basic washing machine). Expansion and contraction from the heating cycle stresses the porcelain, cracking it and allowing hot water to oxidize the steel, causing it to rust out. Did manufacturers redesign the tanks because they could make water heaters cheaper or to assure that they had a steady supply of repeat customers? The answer seems to be "Yes."

That conversation led me to recall another of my old innovation injunctions (which I have started to reblog on FearLess here and here). This one is about choosing quality goods and responsible vendors:

     Demand usable, functional products that can be repaired and recycled.

Our sped-up economy breeds firms that cut corners to speed the launch of the next great thing they want to sell to us. Deal only with companies that take contracts with customers and other stakeholders seriously.

Fit the Second

About three years back I bought a sponge mop to clean my kitchen floor, the kind with a tube on the handle you push down to expel water from the sponge. After a year, the sponge gave out, and I got a replacement for it at the supermarket. The next time I had to replace the sponge head, I couldn't find one that fit. The mop had been redesigned with flimsy fasteners in place of the screw my mop used to attach the head. So I had to toss out a perfectly good mop and spend money on one that I like less.

Fit the Third

When we bought an iPod Touch two years ago, I synced it with my iMac G5, a pretty good computer that was the last iMac Apple made using PowerPC processors before moving to Intel architecture. Several months later, I bought an iPod game at iTunes and tried to download it to my iPod. iTunes informed me that the iPod needed the new release of the iOS operating system before I could install the game. "Fine," I said, I'll do that," but iTunes then told me that my iMac's OS needed to be upgraded from Tiger to Leopard before I could download the upgrade. Next, Apple's Web site informed me that my computer cannot run Leopard because Leopard only supports Intel-based Macs. The same is true for upgrades of apps I have on the iMac that I have used for years. So my quite serviceable computer turned into a glass brick with orphaned apps and a torpid game. Nice planned obsolescence strategy, Apple.

Fit the Fourth

My state legislature is now debating whether to extend our "bottle bill" (which requires customers to deposit a nickel for each can and bottle of soft drinks and beer they buy and redeem their money when they return the containers).  Now public interest groups want the bottle bill to apply to juice, water and other drink containers that litter our landscape. The beverage-industrial-retailing complex is fighting the change just as hard as they did the original bottle bill over a decade ago. All that business-speak about transforming companies into "learning organizations" is to little avail.

If the Shoe Doesn't Fit, Fight

Manufacturers cut corners, change models, manage supply chains, and improve processes to increase profit margins and market share. Many promote "quality" when it comes to eliminating defects and avoiding consumer lawsuits, but not too much quality -- as in building in durability, facilitating product repair and recycling, and following responsible procurement and labor policies. This has to change.

It's now possible to recycle computers, juice containers and CFL light bulbs. None of this happened because the manufacturers thought it was the right thing to do. People concerned about the environment organized themselves and petitioned governments to insist on and facilitate recycling efforts. Maybe you were one of those people. We need similar advocates for users of fast-changing technologies to keep companies from innovating in ways that leave customers twisting in the wind.
 

By Geoff Dutton

Image via Anonymous Works