Chinese rotors are junk

That (that you can have good engineering but a generally bad part) is a
contradiction. Engineering includes material specifications, dimensions
and tolerances, *and* the processes used to make the part. If you have
one or a combination of poorly chosen raw material, and/or bad processes
that result in bad reaction to the application (i.e., residual stresses,
spatially and temporally varying coefficients of thermal expansion
throughout the part due to varying grain structure and material
properties so that it warps when moderate heat is applied), and/or
sloppy initial tolerances, the part is, by definition, bad due to bad or
non-existent engineering.

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

We are talking about parts sourced in china here. The print doesn't
carry the same weight with most vendors it does in places like the USA,
europe, and japan.

Generally not when you are dealing with a part sourced in china. Vendors
will actually switch plastic resins and materials claiming they are the
same thing, first the engineer learns of it is when the parts fail. After
the processes are set up and agreed upon they are changed, first the
engineer learns of it is from failing parts.

I could agree with you wrt parts made in the USA, europe, and japan for
the most part, but for china, in most cases the engineer has no power.

The MBA's and the finance folks picked the lowest price source, the
engineer had no say in the matter. The engineer has to get quality parts
out of them, but the vendor knows the engineer has no power with regards
to him getting the buisness. So the vendor turns out crap sells it cheap,
makes a ton of cash. The finance guy is happy, the MBA is happy, everyone
blames engineering for the shitty product, the company gets a bad rep,
profits drop, more gets moved to china, engineers get laid off, design
engineering is relocated to china, finance and business people are really
happy getting bonuses for saving so much money, product is ODM'd,
chinese company learns how to make it, chinese company becomes a
competitor, US corporation goes out of business, top MBA's and finance
guys get fat severance packages and move on to the next company.

That about sums it up.

Why the hell did I become an engineer when this society rewards weasels?

 

Not necessarily. The design engineers rarely live in the plant and
constantly audit the manufacturing process to ensure that it is followed
precisely. That is the domain of manufacturing personnel. Some do this
extremely well and some are sloppy. Sloppy manufacturing will overcome
excellent engineering every time. Chrysler is a great example of this.
for decades they had some of the best engineered vehicles in the
world, but Chrysler manufacturing has never been better than average on
a good day, and worse than average typically.


Matt

 

I ask myself that question from time to time as well, but then I enjoy
being able to look in the mirror and not be ashamed.


Matt

 

"made in the USA" really only means engineered and assembled. Most outsource
to China and play the percentages game to make that claim - if they even do
that. Most lie outright and say "Made in the USA" if their company is there.

 

They ask for a rotor to be made to this spec. The Chinese firm outsources
steel as cheaply as low quality as possible becuase there's squat the firm
can do about it other than go elsewhere, which costs them double.

 

Consider Ford's 5% cost reduction a year goal. Never going to buy one -
they are already dropping in reliability as true junk like Kia and Hyundai
are catching up to them.

At this rate, they'll be dead in 20 years. No big loss.

 

Don't worry about the 5% cost reduction a year rutine of big corporations.
The vendors just screw em over (including those in china) when they do this.
I worked for a big corporation that demanded each year that the parts
would cost less and tried to put in a similar program. What the vendors do
(and a co-worker had a friend who worked at ford that said the same
thing), and it's really obvious, is they pad the first year's cost. So
that by the time the cost reductions kick in they've already made the money.

That means the vendor has the money earlier, they get to earn interest
on it, they get to use it as capitial, and if the product the part goes
in flops and dies early, they make more than they would have without the
silly program.

The quality of the parts is not hurt by these programs, but it looks
good in a power-point presentation given by the MBAs despite hurting
the corporation over all.

 

It's not so much that the part costs double, it's the lead time to get
another vendor's tooling completed. Many of the vendors in china that
I had to work with were notorious for saying 'we can do it' to anything
to get the business. It's only once beyond the point of no return that it
is discovered they can't. But now it's too late to go with someone else,
so they have to be tought, quality squeezed out at great effort, etc to
make the project's dates.

There was one supplier who did the 'we can do it' rutine when they
couldn't so much that I wanted to make up a part that was physically
impossible to make, just to see what they'd say.

 

Or they make the first 6 months in the US and when they outsource it to
overseas they never
get around to changing the box labelling, giving them an excuse if they are
caught.

Ted

 

Ahh - so it's management malpractice. So rather than bad or
non-existent engineering, good engineering was there, but later stripped
out of the process. Companies should be held liable due to the implied
warranty of merchantability. But alas, we live in the real world as you
indicate in your next paragraph.

As an engineer, I know what you mean. I'm sure we both have war
stories. Like the time I was with my daughter during a week of her
cancer treatments. While I was away and managing my projects by phone,
a fellow engineer pulled the draftsmen off of all my projects onto his,
and when I got back, guess who was in the dog-house because his projects
were behind schedule? When I complained about it, I was labeled as
paranoid and within a year he was promoted to manager of engineering. I
guess he knew how to "get things done", eh?

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

Yes - they're probably too busy faking the quality documentation that
they aren't provided manpower to do. Of course if the quality system is
designed and implemented correctly, the engineering intent is forced and
therefore effective. But due to trimming the workforce down below the
threshold required to do that (the quality assurance) work properly, the
whole quality process (designing, implementing, and performing on the
line) all gets faked - and that's not just in China). So to save money,
they wast their money three times: once on engineering that does not
follow thru the manufacturing process, secondly on designing and
implementing the quality system that is faked, and thirdly on the
product that benefits neither from the original engineering nor a good
quaility system. *BUT* - they're saving money!!!

Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with "x")

 

This of course, is compounded by their lack of respect for patents and
copyrights, which means they feel that it's perfectly well and good to
try to copy things without understanding or contacting the original firm
first.

Yes, paying royalties/fees/etc sucks, but it does get you reams of data
if you want on what you've just bought into. That whole capacitor fiasco
due to some chemist in China trying to reverse engineer the fluid and
having as many as 50% of them explode under normal use is a prime example.

 

China is hopelessly corrupt, ignores patents, warranties, and copyrights,
and well - that's the way it will be until their government changes.

Iran would be a better place to get these things made. Shoot, *CUBA*
would be as well - I hear they have a lot of bright, hardly employed
people over there, and while they are run by a dictator, they still
conduct themselves honorably when it comes to the points above - at
least with the nations in the area other than the U.S.(warranties are
a bit spottier there, but most firms try, so I hear)

 

Tire Rack sells Italian Brembo rotors. Here is their speal:

You can have Brembo quality in original equipment replacement brake rotors
that are fully compatible with your vehicle's original brake system. And as
you would expect, Brembo OE Replacement Brake Rotors are designed to equal
or exceed the performance of the original equipment rotors that came on your
vehicle. For that matter, in order to provide higher levels of performance
and comfort, Brembo even developed one-piece cast rotors to replace original
equipment two-piece rotors that feature economically stamped steel centers
fastened to the braking surfaces.

Starting with a casting from a Brembo foundry that assures uniform
thickness, Brembo OE Replacement Brake Rotors are machined to exacting
tolerances (the rotor run-out tolerance is only 0.0025", about half of the
industry norm), feature a braking surface finish (ground or fine turned)
compatible with the vehicle's OE specifications and are electronically
balanced to minimize the possibility of vibration.

Brembo offers its OE Replacement Rotors with the same levels of quality,
technology and performance that have earned it Dodge Viper, Ferrari, Ford
Mustang Cobra and Mercedes-Benz OEM fitments. All Brembo OE Replacement
Rotors are manufactured under QS-9000 and ISO 9001 certifications to ensure
the highest level of quality. Brembo brake rotors offer applications for
most every automobile - domestic to import, compact car to luxury SUV.

NOTE: Brembo Original Equipment (OE) Replacement

 

Sounds alot like a guy I worked with who couldn't design his way out
of a wert paper bag. With alot of work myself and other engineers
rescued the project from his design idiocy and he got promoted.

 

I would love to work at such an ideal place, where I've been the quality
system was the beast that needed to be fed and drove the engineering.

 

you're just gonna get me started.... worked with an engineer who flat
out refused to do the paper work to approve a vendor (in china) that was
ignoring patents. He was right to do so. Eventually they took out the
patented features, which were needed so he still didn't to the paper
work. I think the factory in china still used the parts anyway, but
at least the legal liability was gone.

 

Morale:

Let the worthless fail.

 

It just doesn't work that way in typical dilbertish corporate america.
The tasks got pawned off to us, if we hadn't redesigned things, the
failure would have been on us. It's a truely no-win situation.