From Simplicity To Complexity
Things Become Complex Then Break
I have one of those American style fridge freezers, with seperate vertical compartments. I bought it in a sale where it was heavily discounted. End of year stock or something. It was great fun and I thought a great buy at the time. It was exciting when I first got it, as it had a water dispenser, an ice dispenser, a compartment in the door for drinks access without opening the fridge. Similar style fridges now have Internet connection and a flat screen display in case you wanna watch TV while your loading the groceries. Can’t imagine who would want to do that, but that’s beside the point. Its there and you can watch it.
I’ve had the Samsung fridge about 3.5 years now. After a year, the water dispense lever broke, and I disconnected the water supply. With no water supply, the ice dispenser no longer worked. Both these were non-essential and I could live without them, so it wasn’t a problem. No ice, no water but the fridge worked.
About eight months ago, the fridge compartment stopped working. Phoned a Samsung repair shop, they sent an engineer. One week later, 4 visits by the engineer, replacement of a defective pcb unit 3 times, and I’m lighter to the tune of £190, but the fridge is working again.
Last week I noticed water had filled the catch tray on the water dispenser. As the water supply was disconnected, this intrigued me. I emptied the water from the tray and a couple of days later, the water is back again. I empty the tray once more, and this morning its full. I decide to investigate. Opening up the ice dispenser supply unit, its frozen solid. The water supply is disconnected, so where’s all the ice coming from? I get a blunt pointed knife and dig away at the ice. 10 minutes later the supply unit is free of ice and completely empty. I deduce the moisture filtration unit in the freezer has failed. Its pulling moisture from the atmosphere which is icing up parts of the interior. The moisture filtration unit means you don’t need to defrost the fridge, its done for you.
This fridge is only 3.5 years old and I expected it to last 5 to 7 years before something broke. The fridge has other ideas.
My mother has an old Fridgidaire unit. Fridge below, small freezer compartment on top. The Fridgidaire is about 12 or 14 years old. Its a basic model with no fancy frills or extras. It has an internal light, some shelves, a separate freezer compartment (which has no light). Thats all you get. Its as basic a fridge/freezer as your gonna find in the 21st century. My mother has to defrost her fridge every 3 or 4 months when the freezer compartments ices up. She has no moisture filtration unit in her ancient device. I too have to defrost my freezer. I have a funky moisture filtration unit, but its stopped working.
My fridge may be more than twice the price of her unit and way more fancy, but I’m at the same place as my mother, fridge wise. This is not a dig at Samsung or any other fridge manufacturer. Its a fact of modern life.
Our consumer society is based on (almost) free-market competition with the supply and production of consumer goods. In order to attract customers to their wares, manufacturers must match their competitors products, or better them. They’re in a game of constant one-upmanship. Always looking for a competitive edge, a competitive advantage, whether perceived or real.
This inevitably results in producing goods at the lowest unit cost with a minimum life expectancy of the product within a range. The manufacturer walks a fine line between producing shiny pretty things that work, and using the lowest cost components that fail.
Fail too soon and they get bad press and a reputation for poor quality and reliability. Last too long and they keep a potential customer out the buying pool and deny themselves another possible sale. They also reduce profitability as they could have used cheaper components that don’t last as long. The manufacturers are pulled between these two poles.
In order to keep their product line, contemporary and attractive, they add features, functionality and more components. In doing so, they increase complexity. Increasing complexity, increases the chance of component failure. “The more things you have, the more things you have to go wrong.” This axiom applies to cars, washing machines, recorders, driers, televisions, cameras, phones, computers, games consoles, steam irons, power tools, and so on. In fact this applies to all manufactured goods, without exception.
The constant drive, the pursuit of newer, better, faster products, is the motive force behind these vast industries producing consumer goods that fill our lives with so many goodies.
The first car I bought after passing my driving test, was a 2nd hand unloved wreck that ran and ran. It was so basic, no new car with a matching specification is available today. It had a radio fitted as standard, and that was the extent of its feature set. No electric windows. No sunroof. No electric mirrors. No electric boot opener. No parking sensors. No CD player. No heated windscreen. No SatNav. The list goes on.
The car was essentially an engine on four wheels, with a body shell and two doors. The only electrical items apart from the radio were the windscreen wipers and the washer jets. There was little to break or go wrong. And there was little to enjoy in they way of electric toys (windows, mirrors, sunroof, etc).
The price we pay for complexity is an increase in the probability of component failure.
Its a trade-off manufacturers and consumers seem happy to pay for the pleasure of having so many funky shiny toys with which to fill our lives.
But its still a pain when things fail without warning.
Originally Posted: June 16th, 2009
