Large Scale Central

QC or the lack of it!

General Discussion
#1

While trolling on other train websites I have seen many complaints on Quality Control especially with engines. Is this what we have to put up with just to have phun with our toys? Ya I know some think they are anything but toys but it doesn’t matter what you would like to call them to me. I have been fortunate that most everything that I have bought in the past has worked and might only needed some minor adjustments. Switches are an exception as I like to make them work my way.

Seems like if you just gotta be a Beta tester with something new, you run the risk of being the first one to see the flaws up close and personal. Hardly any major manufacture these days comes out with something new that’s not going to fail right away or soon there after…

TOC does a very fine service of coming out with fixes but why should we have to fix it in the first place?

Cheers,

#2

This could take some time to fully explain…

The Chinese manufacturers don’t have the financial ability to set up production, run samples for testing, tear down the floor, set up for another production, and wait for feedback.

I have worked long and hard with a couple of manufacturers, finding, reporting in great detail the issues, generating fixes, all for free.

Those go into production, and hopefully those lessons are passed along to the next unit to be made.

I tried, I mean really, really tried with one manufacturer…and it was fruitless.

When a manufacturer, in print, claims there is no problem because they haven’t seen the problem returned to them, then we have folks, in print, say their engine is coming back for the third time with the same issue, somebody has their head where the sun don’t shine.

I ran into that with one outfit, where the service folks never told anyone, and that got fixed right now.

Some issues cannot be fixed, due to…geez, how in the hell do you say this…“contracts”.

Probably the oddest is you generate a list of things that are wrong, the manufacturer screams bloody murder that there isn’t (and all the shill yell the same), yet the next run has over 90% of those items fixed, just as you reported…

There are several folks who try to work with manufacturers to keep the problems in check.

It’s hard work.

Please notice carefully no names or product have been mentioned…

#3

No need to mention names. Most of us know who the guilty bstrds are.

What amazes me is their chutzpa! If I tried that in my business, I’d leave a trail of bodies. Might get me talked about.

What amazes me again is that we continue to buy from them!

Sigh.

Think I’ll go play with my trains

SteveF

#4

This kind of shoddiness is pervasive in our society as a whole. Disposable this, prepackaged that. Its expensive to find anything that will last more than a few years, or that works as advertised.

#5

Yes, this IS a problem. I’m currently fighting with a bunch of switches that have well documented problems (and fortunately DIY solutions too). I assumed that since the problems were documented well over a year ago, that current production would have fixed the problems, but NO.

I could send them back and demand a refund. I do enough business with the dealer that they would probably accommodate me, but I need them. So I’ll spend an extra hour or so per switch fixing what should have been done in the factory.

Annoying - but you do what you have to do to get what you want at the price you are willing to pay.

JR

#6

This is an interesting philosophy that is being propounded .
Do all of us accept goods that are not quite up to speed and fix them ourselves ? I do , that is when it is feasible , but there are some things we should be aware of when pursuing this path . Do we invalidate the gaurantee ? Is it worth it anyway .? My philosophy is fix the damn thing , at least I know it’s been done properly if I do it . It also avoids all the aggro of arguing with (quite often) people whom you would think paid for the thing out of their own pocket . They really pee me off , but I suppose you get what you pay for when you employ someone .
A clasic example of shoddy goods that we willingly accept is kits . I was making a 1/35 Main Battle Tank today , and the faults I had to "trim " to fit were several . The kit cost £27 (x 1.7 for $ ) , I suppose if it were a " throw the bits up in the air and they land assembled " kit , I might complain. But I would find it too expensive , probably .
But , we must be a bit barmy . Fancy spending £1000 on a computer with no instructions included . Jeez . There is one part with this machine whose function completely escapes me . I have been told “well , I THINK it’s a…”
I think it’s a con .
Mike M

#7

So in other words…its worth it to wait a year till the second (hopefully corrected) run of product hits the market.

#8

…if there is a “Second Run”…!!!

#9
Fred Mills said:
.....if there is a "Second Run"........!!!!
OR if they actually correct the flaw on the second run. The problem I'm dealing with has persisted through three versions and perhaps a dozen production runs.

JR

#10

I have had a hell of a lot of trouble with one particular loco. This experience has put me off buying there newest articulated loco with the same chassis’s, and they are still having problems with it!
daniel

#11

Check the stamp, does it say “Made in Hurry” or made in “*****” ? Oh wait I cant say that.

#12

As someone once put it ‘are those quality control guys just paid to stick stickers on the loco’s and not check them?’

#13

Bottom line is, it is far cheaper to buy stickers than to pay someone to actually inspect.

But, just so we all are on the same page, what are the inspection standards?

If there is a design issue (no mention here of any names at all, please notice), do the inspectors approve to the design standard?

Makes one pause…

#14
Curmudgeon said:
Bottom line is, it is far cheaper to buy stickers than to pay someone to actually inspect.
I think this is true, but the whole concept of 'inspection' is about 50 years obsolete as well. What rules is the schedule. You all probably realize that money tied up in capital investment and materials that aren't pounding out product is a very bad thing. You can argue all day that "Yes, but if turn out bad products you'll lose your business" which may be true enough, but the fact is that you MUST turn out products, and right now.

So, I’m on an internal IT project that I stupidly volunteered for. Having spent 25 years in IT and 5 years getting the hell out, I thought what the heck, let’s go see and learn from a large organization doing a big project. What an idiot.

Here’s how ‘inspection’ works. The developers have a schedule–and regardless of ANYTHING else, they WILL produce their products on time and get them in to test. Nevermind that they didn’t test their own work–they didn’t have time to. So, when test gets stuff that has known errors in it–stuff that everyone including management ACKNOWLEDGES has known errors in it, Kirk asks, “Why would you send something in to test that you already know is broken?” Well of course the BS starts to flow, but the real answer is, “So we can honestly state that testing began on schedule.”

So, while inspection should be checking to ensure process is in control, there is no process to control in the first place. All inspection does is highlight the endless stream of errors that always come out of a process-free system.

With literally hundreds of errors to deal with, someone has to prioritize them because they all can’t be fixed and still stay on schedule. Because there’s no process, the crap that gets fixed simply has a whole list of NEW problems that weren’t even there before (side effects), and within a few short weeks, both the development team (100 people) and the test team (20 people) are completely overwhelmed, up their ears in garbage.

The first thing you have to do if you’re going to survive at all is to stop doing re-work. You simply can’t fix the errors that inspection finds or you’ll kill yourself and production will stop. And hey, the guy who gets paid to ship on time DOESN’T get pinged for returns! So, what do you do? You ship [your busted crap] on time!

On my project, this problem is solved in a more sophisticated way. The errors are categorized into ‘fix’ and ‘enhancement’. Since we all know that we can’t let scope get out of hand, everything that goes into the ‘enhancement’ bucket is seen (by management, who has not Clue One about what any of this stuff is) as increased scope. Problem solved–20% of my broken parts can now be written off as enhancements and basically pushed off the deck never to be seen again.

But the project is on schedule and will be deemed a success.

#15

Sorry guys, but you really got me goin’ on that one.

#16

wonder how long I would last if I did my job that way? TOC, how long would your sub have lasted?

Andre’

#17

A thing very close to all our hearts is defence expenditure .
I worked on defence projects–essential ones --where if you found a problem ,and by crikey , were there problems, you kept quiet about it just in case someone decided that it was an excuse to close the project . We went to progress meetings and lied through our teeth to keep contracts going , knowing that we would ultimately come up with the goods , and "product support " would be carried out to ameliorate the problems .
As for doing the job within budget , you weren’t allowed not to spend the full budget , and the customer preferred an overspend because it justified his case for asking for the money in the first place . I know of one case where a resisitor was mounted in an LRU with a wire coming in from nowhere , and a wire going out to knowhere , just to pad out the cost . Of course , the costing "engineers " didn’t have a clue as to the real technical workings–we were cutting edge , so few people could criticise --lack of knowledge .
And if you don’t think this happens , just think of the rubber seals that killed those brave astronauts . We knew from past experience that that type of seal freezes solid at -26c , so why was it ignored ? Don’t risk the project ?I wonder .
Mike

#18

…and others wonder why I get P****** O** when big time competitors are allowed to get away with BS advertising that falsely, or at least, misleadingly, promotes their latest and greatest doodad.

If you have been following the recent release of brand “X” battery powered radio control equipment, you might have noticed much hoopla was employed trying to convince potential customers the system was, firstly DCC capable, then based on DCC and now, in their latest advertising, no mention is made of DCC at all.
I wonder why that is?
Could it just be that the product does not have any NMRA DCC conformance certificates and whilst the system is capable of operating a DCC compliant sound system, it doesn’t always do it very well.

My point of the above is that for many LS manufacturers, more emphasis is placed on the “sizzle” rather than what is actually in the sausage.

BS wins. At least in the short term.
All the majors do it and if smaller manufacturers like myself have the temerity to question the ethics we are ostracised and branded as Communists or Anarchists who deserve shooting at dawn.

#19

Kirk-
I did QC when I got out of the NavSux in '74.

Had my little “bug” and all.

Took it quite seriously.

I don’t know the answers in full, but I do know one electronic device manufacturer in the hobby (no longer in business), word was the stuff was SO bad he was convinced to put in QC inspectors.

Guess what?

They failed 100% of the boards (or dang near).

Solution?

Fire the inspectors.
Re-read the part in parenthesis.

TOC

#20

I truly believe that these dysfunctions are the certain outcome of any human organization greater than about 15 people. Any company that has more employees than can comfortably sit together at a single dinner table and speak to one another will suffer from this kind of crap. But, when the number of employees gets to be over say 1,000, then serious insanity becomes the norm. Scott Adams isn’t funny because he exagerates the truth, he’s funny because he’s so close to it!

The symptoms include (I’ve made these up, but you’ll recognize them):

  1. Boosterism (people say nice-sounding things about everything because they believe finding problems to solve is a bad thing, and they especially believe their company, organization, product, etc., is the best regardless of any data to the contrary)
  2. The Okey Dokey Syndrome (everything is okey-dokey, regardless of what the data tell us), and
  3. The Success Conspiracy (this is the failure is not an option mentality…YES, failure IS an option! Especially if everyone simply conspires to claim there are no problems).