Complexity and Malfunctions: A Catch-22
Let’s look at the increasing complexity of the modern automobile. All manufacturers want to gain an edge over the competition. They need to tell consumers that their vehicles offer more and better conveniences. These lead to greater complexity, and greater complexity increases the number of parts.
When there are more parts, there are simply more things that can go wrong. This increases the possibility that a car will become a lemon-even if each individual part is of higher overall quality. If only one out of every thousand components is defective, a car with 15,000 components will still have five times as many defects as a car with 3,000 components.
A part that works properly 99.9 percent of the time will still fail one time in 1,000. Put together just fifty parts that work properly 99.9 percent of the time, and the entire vehicle will work properly only 95.2 percent of the time-failing nearly one time in twenty. What do you think happens when manufacturers assemble 15,000 parts?
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