Saturday, January 30, 2010

Product Design

Given the fact that we are reading chapter four, which is on product and service design, I find it both exciting and unfortunate, respectively, that Apple has released their iPad and that Toyota has recalled a very large number of their vehicles.

I’ll begin with the exciting. I say it’s exciting, but that is because I find myself part of a club that is no longer all that exclusive. I am a Mac guy! This generally means that for me, and for tens of millions of other Americans, Mr. Jobs and his ilk can do no wrong. How can this be? How can a company hook so many people with products and applications that all have perfectly acceptable substitutes?

I think the answer to this question has something to do with the proprietary nature of Apple. For as long as the company has been in operation, they have kept the bulk of their technological achievements to themselves. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this is irrelevant, I simply want to point out the atmosphere that it has created within the company, which I believe in turn has cascaded itself out onto its customers.

It means that not only does Apple belong to Apple, but that Apple customers belong to Apple. When you are growing up in a family, and dealing with all of the issues that come along with that, you are very protective and proprietary when it comes to that family. I think that’s the atmosphere that Apple has created over all these years, and it shows. I am very loyal to my family.

Moving on to Toyota, it is very unfortunate that no one seems to be able to figure out what’s going on with the faulty accelerator pedals that have caused terrible accidents and deaths, and that have led to a recall of approximately 5 million vehicles in Europe and the United States.

There seems to be a lot of pointing of fingers going on. Toyota wants to blame CTS Corp., the company that has produced pedals for the car company for nearly a decade now. CTS, however continues to defend themselves saying that the problem goes back to around 1999, before CTS was even producing the pedals. They say that for the entire time they have had a contract with Toyota, they have continuously met product specifications, and that the true problem lies in Toyota’s design, not in the design of the pedals.

What does that mean for the customer? Well ultimately, it means that regardless of who is at fault, and regardless of where the problem originated, Toyota will be the company to take the biggest fall. Consumers couldn’t care less about who supplies Toyota’s products. They may know CTS’s name for a minute or two, but soon they will be forgotten and the spotlight will be back to full center on Toyota.

Bottom line is that Toyota botched a product that was very important not to botch. I don’t know how or why, or whether Toyota could have reacted differently even if they wanted to, but it doesn’t matter. Their reputation will be severely tarnished from this and I will be interested to see just how much market share they lose after the smoke has cleared.


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