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02.11

Engineering for Reparability: Designing for the Greater Good?

By John R. Platt

These days, it seems like more and more products are designed to be replaced rather than repaired. This planned obsolescence has many factors behind it, but it is always necessary? Can product engineers design devices so they can be fixed instead of throw away? Should they strive to do that more often than not? How would designing reparable devices benefit not just the consumer, but also the engineer and the manufacturer? Some of the answers might not be what you expect.

Why Some Devices Aren't Reparable

"There are a lot of classic reasons why some things aren't reparable," says Steve Erickson, a certified professional logistician and senior technical specialist with the non-profit government consulting group, LMI. "When you're in a consumer market for cell phones or an iPad, and you've got an 18-month product cycle, it's hard to justify building much reparability more than a way to change the battery."

In addition, some products are more reliable if they cannot be repaired. "Opening things breaks them," says Erickson. "It can create malfunctions, danger for the user, or product liability issues."

Some repair simply costs too much. "Repair of electronic systems," says professor Peter Sandborn of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Maryland, "comes down to cost: is it cheaper to replace or repair? Integrated circuits are not reparable. Electronic boards are reparable, but in order to repair one must test, diagnose, perform the repair, and then test again. This is not generally cost-effective unless you have significant value wrapped up in the board."

Erickson agrees. "For a lot of consumer devices, places that specialize in repair are going to say it's not worth the labor to replace certain components."

Beyond that, small, easily replaceable devices like cell phones aren't really the product that most companies are selling. Instead, they're selling services based on the existence of the cell phone. "They've commoditized the product," says Erickson. "They could repair a cell phone, but instead they want to sell you a two-year contract. The phone is free as long as the cash flow is otherwise provided."

Finally, small commodities sold in rapidly evolving technologies (like smart phones and laptops) are more likely to be thrown away or replaced "because the next model has better capabilities," Erickson points out.

What Reparability Offers

But designing a product that is supposed to last, or which can at least last longer than the intended product cycle, provides numerous benefits. For one thing, un-reparable products are not eco-friendly. Selling reparable devices can lessen the amount of material that ends up in landfills, says Pamela Waterman, founder of Engineering Ink Editorial Services, who also points out that new avenues of employment could be created by designing reparable devices. "The potential to provide jobs for newly trained repair people is phenomenal," says Waterman.

Designing a product that can be repaired also opens up new revenue streams. "The customers we work with, which are the avionics and military folks, have traditionally been very repair oriented," says professor Sandborn. "For them, the systems they are dealing with are expensive so they are reluctant to throw them away. As a result, these organizations have evolved to derive a significant portion of their income from performing maintenance." In fact, says Sandborn, "maintenance is the largest profit center for many of the major avionics and military system manufacturers."

A product that can be repaired also has a much longer lifespan, even if it changes hands (or locations) three or four times over the years. "A five-year-old laptop might end up in Uganda," says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit.com, a company founded to repair Apple devices that has expanded to offer components and free online repair manuals for all manner of devices.

Wiens points to iFixit's "Self-Repair Manifesto" for several additional benefits of reparability, including keeping costs down, the ability to learn while repairing, pride of ownership, and inspiring creativity.

Reparability Benefits Manufacturers

Devices that can be repaired are also easier to manufacture, as well as to service, says Wiens. "Look at the iPhone 4. It's far more reparable than the first iPhone," which he says featured several glue-together components that made repair difficult, if not impossible. As a result, Apple had to replace far more phones than the expected, which proved to be quite costly.

"Companies are incentivized to make devices that are easy to repair, and that means they are easier to assemble," says Wiens. "This reduces their manufacturing costs and their warrantee costs." In Apple's case, this makes it easier for Apple's agents in the field, the fabled Apple Geniuses, to do their jobs when a broken device comes into an Apple store.

Reparable devices are more likely to be standardized, which can reduce manufacturers' or operators' costs. "UPS now runs trucks that have 30-year operating lives," says Erickson. They can also create good will among consumers. "When you have similar products or components being used across multiple items, the consumer wants it, because they don't want multiple repair processes," he says.

Moving Toward Reparability

So how do you go about making a device that can be repaired? Sometimes it involves making a business case for reparability, says Erickson. "If the product cycle runs faster than the repair time," it might not be something the average engineering has control over, he says.

It could also mean talking to your marketing team early in the product design process, says Erickson. A reparable device could have benefits for the consumer, which could give a product extra selling points and an edge over the competition.

There are several important design considerations to make early on, including the ergonomics of repair. Erickson says companies like Boeing pay a lot of attention to the reparability of their products, asking questions like what position does an engineer or mechanic need to physically be in while working on a component, or what special tools might be required for a job.

Wiens says that requiring special or unique tools can be a major problem for consumers. The new iPhone 4, he says, contains a special security screw that may or may not be protected under patent so only Apple personnel can open the device. "Our solution was to create a special screwdriver that's compatible enough so there's not a patent infringement issue," he says.

Wiens also recommends the Maker's Bill of Rights, published by Make magazine, which strongly suggests making design choices like building easy-to-open cases, using screws instead of glues, and including schematics and manuals with products when they are sold.

Are reparable devices always possible or preferable? Probably not. But consumers can be frustrated when their purchases do not last as long as they should, and keeping the customer happy is always a good design choice.

John R. Platt is a frequent contributor to Today's Engineer, as well as IEEE's The Institute, Scientific American, Mother Nature Network and other publications.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.