Re: Equipment, and the Useless Eco- legislation ...

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@xxxxxxxxxxxx> hath wroth:

See what I'm saying now ?
Arfa

Nope. What you're asking for are government mandated inventory
levels. We already have some of that in the US in the auto industry,
where manufacturers are required to make parts available for 5(?)
years after date of manufacture. The result has been a flood of
counterfeit parts, most of which are junk. The manufacturers also
have disbursed the cost of stocking useless inventory to the buyers of
new cars.
<http://www.iii.org/media/hottopics/insurance/genericauto/>

That's the problem with your suggestion. The $40 CD/DVD player will
cost considerably more if the manufacturer is expected to inventory
all the parts inside, in individual coin bags, as individual SKU's.
Since the real cost is warehouse space and accounting overhead, the
cost will be substantial. Incidentally, the most difficult problem
with China manufacturing is storage space.

So, what percentage of a manufacturing run is ever expected to be
repaired? Well, I'm only familiar with the wireless and
communications business. In the public safety and government sector,
it's 100% of the radios sold. Note that these are $1,000 radios.
However, in the consumer sector, the radios are essentially throw
away, and are rarely repaired. Fortunately, many of the parts are
generic, but that was accidental, not intentional. So, what is the
difference between a $50 (high end) FRS/GMRS/MURS radio, and a $1,000
public safety radio? Well, quite a bit, but little of it justifies
charging 200 times more. What does justify the cost is that the
manufacturers of high end radios stand behind their products, with
extensive (authorized) dealer networks, and in depth parts stocking.
Now, extrapolate the commodity $40 CD/DVD player into such an
operation, and methinks you'll end up with a $1,000 player.

Is a $40 CD/DVD player even worth repairing? At my shop rate, that's
about 30 minutes of repair time, assuming I use no parts. I can
barely test the unit and fill out the paperwork in 30 minutes, much
less fix anything.

The laws of unintended consequences also applies here. The intent is
to have your Denon xformer available at a reasonable cost. Instead,
you're going to be offered a "power supply sub-assembly" or some
manner of board exchange program, instead of the individual parts.
This would probably satisfy the letter of the proposed law, but would
dramatically increase your cost of the parts to the point where the
device would be easily deemed uneconomical to repair. For example, I
can buy individual parts and pieces for the older HP LaserJet II, III,
and 4 printers. However, parts for all of the recent HP economy
printers are offered only as sub-assemblies.
<http://partsurfer.hp.com/cgi-bin/spi/main>
Try to find some of the tiny and easily broken inkjet printer parts
and pieces.

There are plenty of things that can be done to improve the land fill
problem. My favorite is subsidized recycling and reclamation. This
is being done locally by a senior citizen's group, where they break
apart cell phones, computahs and electronics, and sell the scrap to
metal recyclers.
<http://www.greybears.org/computer.html>

What are you going to do with all the inventories of repair parts
after the 5(?) year limit expires? More land fill? Incidentally, I
bought the obsolete parts inventory from several repair shops and
radio shops. The volume of the junk is far more than justifiable.
I've tried to sell the mess but nobody was interested.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

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