As I have mentioned in other posts, I’m pretty hands on. I still do a lot of my own remodeling in my house & I tackle selective repairs on my vehicles. It is this last item I want to write about today.
You really have to wonder if the folks who have designed cars have ever tried servicing what they came up with. Let me give you a great example. I had a 2008 Cadillac CTS that eventually needed a headlight replaced. The dealer told me it was going to be around a $500 repair. I won’t repeat my response… I figured how hard could this be? It’s only a headlight! After you’ve removed most of the front nose of the car to get to it, you know why they charged this much. Surely, LPPD (Lean Product & Process Development) was not in play for this part of the car. If it were, the service department wasn’t invited!
When I heard it was going to cost me between $400 & $500 to change spark plugs on my 2015 Wrangler JK, I thought that’s crazy & decided to go for it. You’d think I would have learned my lesson. Now I know why it was that much! You basically have to take off the top of the engine! Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little…
The plugs on the passenger side are to the left of the pic above were fairly easy to work on. To get to the ones on the driver side, you must remove the upper air plenum. It is not easy to remove! I’ll leave it at that. Again, was anyone from the service group involved in this lovely design? Assuming there was nowhere else to put the plenum, there are a lot of things that could have been done to make it easier. Since you only have to change them every 100K, I guess it’s no big deal, right?
Having started in engineering many moons ago, I made it a point to get on the floor & talk to the guys fabricating & assembling what I had come up with. Many of these folks had seen just about everything imaginable over their decades on the job. Their input on both what I had done & what I was thinking about on new designs was invaluable to me! This was well in advance of knowing how to even spell Gemba. This led me to also talking to our service people along the way.
If you want to know where your designs are failing or how serviceable they are, make a point of regularly visiting your service team. If it’s a 3rd party, go see them! If you aren’t including them in your product development efforts, you should start doing so. Even better, regardless of your title, put on some jeans & get out on the floor & help build the next prototype! You are guaranteed to learn a great deal more than what you might in your conference room.
Thanks & Good Wishes for a successful 2019!
Mike