Has product quality at large begun to go downhill?

[Art Kleiner <art@well.com>]

I've been a long-time reader (I should say browser) of this list, but 
since I'm a writer with only a journalist's knowledge of 
quality/SPC/process design issues, I rarely post anything.

At the same time, I now have a question that I think would be more 
relevant to this list than anywhere else:

Has product quality at large begun to go downhill?

I first thought I saw this happening in consumer electronics. You've 
probably had the same experience -- going to buy a videodisk player 
or tape recorder or television, and being asked to pay extra for an 
extended warranty.

From a systems perspective, this seems like a complete 
suboptimization: It rewards the company, and the retailer, for 
producing products of lower durability and quality.

And then there seemed to be ample reason for a consumer to prefer 
poor quality: Better to pay a lower price, throw the device out after 
a couple of years, and then replace it with something more up-to-date.

Personally, I possess at least a dozen devices -- from a color 
laserprinter to a portable phone and everything in between -- that 
proved far less durable than I expected. And that didn't seem to be 
the case a dozen years ago. Checking around anecdotally, I got the 
same impression.

But is there any way to confirm this systematically? And in the view 
of members of this list, is it true? Has there been a backlash of 
poor quality in the years since, say, 1995, -- a backlash that is 
either deliberate or unintentional?

If there IS one, I'd like to write about it -- in a column on 
"Culture and Change" that I write for strategy+business journal.

In any case, thank you for your consideration.
--
   -- Art Kleiner

      Email: art@well.com
      Website: http://www.artkleiner.com