An open letter to manufacturers (1 Viewer)

[PhillipJFrye]

Didn't quite know where to post this, thanks for reading...

So i spent the last week with a mechanic buddy putting an ARB bullbar and a Dobinsons rear bumper/tire carrier on my troopy. Both are wonderful, extremely well built products and i couldn't be happier with the engineering and quality.

The instructions that came with both items were a travesty. A kind of sick joke that cost time, money, and perhaps caused a dusting of ptsd.

If the strategy is to favor professional installation at a licensed shop, i get it. no problem with that. if you live in australia or south africa, fantastic.

If, however, you're going to push into markets like central america (my case), where licensing hardly exists and honest, detail-oriented mechanics are very difficult to find, there needs to be some kind of step by step instruction. we had to go by bad photocopies of single drawings where all the parts are put together at once... basically a quick reference drawing for a mechanic who's already installed 100 bumpers or bulbars.

i am a fan of all the wonderful companies that work so hard to provide amazing add-ons to our dear vehicles. i want to see these companies grow and get better.

so i'm begging you, hire a good tech writer, create instructions for the weekend wrencher, get a quick focus group together and have them try to use said instructions, see where there might problems, punch up the text, and create a packet of info that is worthy of the product it describes.

i'm not picking on ARB and Dobinsons, this seems to be an endemic problem in the industry.

i'd love to hear any info or comments. thanks!

 

[alexandruast]

Planning for product documentation sometimes gets skipped in product development, so you end up without it. At the last minute, someone is "asked" to do it for free, because... why not! Also, there might be some legal requirements to provide documentation. So here you have, documentation for the sake of documentation. Tech writers and focus groups belong in the fictional realm )

 

[PhillipJFrye]

Planning for product documentation sometimes gets skipped in product development, so you end up without it. At the last minute, someone is "asked" to do it for free, because... why not! Also, there might be some legal requirements to provide documentation. So here you have, documentation for the sake of documentation. Tech writers and focus groups belong in the fictional realm )

reminds me of what a buddy of mine who worked at netflix said about badly done subtitles. last priority, only a couple of outfits available to do it, no one checking. considering the effort put into product development and testing for aftermarket parts, throwing together some decent instructions would cost peanuts and frankly it would simply be the correct thing to do. do right by your customers who spend their hard earned coin on your products. at the root it's a moral imperative.

btw, thanks for the comment : )

 

[PIP]

I know an "engineer" who's job is it to proof the procedures and write the shop manuals for a major motor vehicle manufacturer.

The guy barely knows which end of the ratchet to hold.

I remember an instance where his department spent weeks of terrifically long days trying to design a procedure to retrofit a vibration dampener to a body structure to prevent cracking. The goal being to minimize labor hours paid to the dealerships. Hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line. Multiple engineering departments couldn't figure out how to drill a pair of mounting holes without spending 12 hours disassembling and reassembling the front of the vehicle. I stopped him mid-story, asked for the specifics of the problem. I sketched a drawing of a formed sheetmetal drill guide/stop and wrote the number of a stamping house that could make them for pennies a piece.

They went with my design and the OEM saved over $150 million in reduced warranty labor costs.

I don't think I'm all that smart, but most of these corporate ME's are total idiots with the ability to memorize what they read in a book. No common sense.

These are the guys that are writing your instructions.

 

[PhillipJFrye]

I know an "engineer" who's job is it to proof the procedures and write the shop manuals for a major motor vehicle manufacturer.

The guy barely knows which end of the ratchet to hold.

I remember an instance where his department spent weeks of terrifically long days trying to design a procedure to retrofit a vibration dampener to a body structure to prevent cracking. The goal being to minimize labor hours paid to the dealerships. Hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line. Multiple engineering departments couldn't figure out how to drill a pair of mounting holes without spending 12 hours disassembling and reassembling the front of the vehicle. I stopped him mid-story, asked for the specifics of the problem. I sketched a drawing of a formed sheetmetal drill guide/stop and wrote the number of a stamping house that could make them for pennies a piece.

They went with my design and the OEM saved over $150 million in reduced warranty labor costs.

I don't think I'm all that smart, but most of these corporate ME's are total idiots with the ability to memorize what they read in a book. No common sense.

These are the guys that are writing your instructions.

wow, now that's a story. i suspect you might be selling yourself short. it would be something if all those people involved were complete airheads. i bet you have one of those brains that's exceptional at visualization and mechanics. my brother is that way, and i sure as hell am not. the important question is, did you at least get a case of whisky or something for saving all that money?

 

[PIP]

wow, now that's a story. i suspect you might be selling yourself short. it would be something if all those people involved were complete airheads. i bet you have one of those brains that's exceptional at visualization and mechanics. my brother is that way, and i sure as hell am not. the important question is, did you at least get a case of whisky or something for saving all that money?

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't mean it in a "I outsmarted those engineers" kind of way.

I think some corporations breed engineering environments where idiots thrive.

I've been around long enough and read enough modern science literature to believe that a human brain wired to respond well to the sequential learning model pushed by most engineering programs is a brain that does not do well in the spatial reasoning environment where real engineering takes place.

There are a lot of people predisposed to be great engineers, but they can't memorize what they read in a book and regurgitate it on command. Educational institutions don't cater to those people. They label them Autistic, ADHD and dyslexics.

And no, I wasn't wise enough to monetize my contribution. See what I mean- I'm not so smart after all.

 

[PhillipJFrye]

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't mean it in a "I outsmarted those engineers" kind of way.

I think some corporations breed engineering environments where idiots thrive.

I've been around long enough and read enough modern science literature to believe that a human brain wired to respond well to the sequential learning model pushed by most engineering programs is a brain that does not do well in the spatial reasoning environment where real engineering takes place.

There are a lot of people predisposed to be great engineers, but they can't memorize what they read in a book and regurgitate it on command. Educational institutions don't cater to those people. They label them Autistic, ADHD and dyslexics.

And no, I wasn't wise enough to monetize my contribution. See what I mean- I'm not so smart after all.

well i couldn't agree with you more on this stuff. there is a big disconnect between formal education and old fashioned autodidactic learning and apprenticeships. maybe the ideal would be both, but i'm actually a good example of the former. i never got a degree in zymurgy, but i taught myself for years and read textbooks and eventually got hired to be an assistant brewer, which was basically my apprenticeship, and now i'm going on 30 years of making beer for a living.