[Cuis] Economic Design

[David Graham]

On 6/5/12 7:26 AM, Juan Vuletich wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> When I was a kid, my father worked for a company that is generally 
> regarded as a world leader in the automobile market: Mercedes Benz. I 
> remember in the early 80's, an ad for a Basic compiler with advanced 
> structured stuff from Pascal. The ad presented it as "the Mercedes of 
> Basics". These guys were so serious when it comes to product quality, 
> that comparing anything with them was synonym with "top quality". I 
> still read from time to time old stuff from them, because I find their 
> attitude inspiring.
>
> Today I found an article in a 1974 issue of an internal magazine for 
> the sales organization. It is called "Economic Design", and I was 
> astonished by how directly the ideas apply to our field. Here it is, 
> sightly abridged and translated from Spanish into English (my comments 
> follow afterwards). I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
>
> -----------------------------------
> Economic Design
> (Mercedes Benz "Información de Venta", VII./VIII. 1974/2 A/II/031)
>
> Criteria from our development department on a hot topic, equally 
> interesting to both customers and salesmen.
>
> The "economic design" subject plays a big part in our house. On one 
> hand we must design for economic manufacture, so we can sell at good 
> prices. On the other hand, we must reduce as much as possible the 
> maintenance and repair costs for our customers. Unfortunately, these 
> objectives might contradict each other, so we need to find a balance 
> between them.
>
> In early design phases we already try to have a small set of different 
> groups and elements (for example, engines, transmissions, suspension 
> parts) be enough for many different car models and types. We solve 
> this by applying a system of interchangeable elements for the whole 
> series. In this way it is possible to use big quantities of each group 
> or part. This reduces manufacture cost of each one, and also 
> simplifies the storage and logistics of spare parts.
An interesting anecdote, is that around this time, the largest US 
automakers chassis/engine/transmission combinations approached 100 
iterations.

On the topic of design, has anyone else on the list read "The Design of 
Everyday Things" by Donald Norman?  I read it a few years ago and still 
think about it every time I use a poorly designed door handle. :)