On 24th March, Bill wrote:
"...Sounds like the engineer who decided something was "just enough" was
wrong. Making good decisions like that separates the good engineers from the
not so good..."
************************************
Hi Bill,
Well, in truth, such decisions were "...top-down-driven", i.e. they came
from on-high...
Case in point: some 25 years ago at the place, there was a wholescale
overhaul of the way we traditionally "thought" cars should be put together:
i.e. why use a screw, when velcro would do...? Why drive self-tappers with
an air tool, when a series of integrally-molded push-pins will do...? And so
on, & so on...
The new mantra was called "Design For Assembly", and went by the acronym of
(what else?) DFA...
Was it good...? Yes, in the short term it saved big $$$ on tooling,
assembling, parts, speed, etc. etc. In the long term...? A disaster---but
only if you were a "do-it-yourselfer", or an auto body repairman.
Parts self-destructed whenever they were pulled free of their "moorings", it
was nearly impossible to know what specifically held parts to the body, etc.
etc.
In short, DOA was designed to be "...just enough"---just enough to get the
product out the door, looking reasonably good. What it ignored was the very
real "...just in case" of after-market repairs. In short, we had evolved
(de-volved?) into making a throw-away car, much as our of-shore peers had
been essentially doing for years before us.
~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ
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