Session 16

Design Quality (Presentations)

820:240

Environment, Technology, and Society

Comments from Presentation

... coming soon

Students Summaries

• The main area of Design Quality the group presented on was product safety. We were asked to get into groups to talk about recalls, and the questions we were given were: How do you hear of recalls, How often do you hear of recall, and What kind of products are most often recalled? I believe the majority of the class came to the conclusion that we hear of recalls through the news, media, internet, etc. My group couldn't remember many items recalled, therefore, we concluded that products weren't oftenly recalled and boy were we wrong.

  Products are recalled all the time and the types of products vary. Reasons products may be recalled are ineffective, defective, unsafe, or they failed to meet average standard performance requirements. Many companies rely on their consumers to update them on the efficiency of their product.

  If a call does come in the company must stop production and distribution, talk to the distributors and dealors, and then finally let the remaining consumers know about the problems. From there the company refunds, repairs, and/or replaces.

  Design Quality is extremely important to both the consumer and the distributors. The safety of all who use products is very valuable to companies, therefore, it's important to produce the best design as possible in order to prevent injury.

• Design Quality was talked about between two of three presenters. The presters that went first and third talked about design quality. Design Quality:

  Product safety -- Product recalls- get recalls quite often for food, vehicles, chilrens toys and products. In groups we discussed product recalls and what we knew about product recalls and presented these findings to the class. Childrens products have to meet strict regulations. But still have a lot of recalls. In general for a recall is for defectiveness, its unsafe, advertisements are false etc.

  Consumers should: Look over product, make sure its FDA approved. If its not safe a way to report it is call company itself, call Federal Agencies, contact the place where you bought the product. What Companies have to do if product is found unsafe: Stop all production and shipping of product. Notify all agencies to repot recall. Refund-Replace and monitor recall.

  Consumers have to look out for themselves, exspecially when it comes to kids products. In conclusion of recall-Lack Of Product Safety Is Product Recall.

  Web Sites:

  • safechild.net
  • cpsc.gov
  • jpma.org

  Space Program was the other presenters topic. Talked about Air Shuttle Colombia, crashing after enering atmoshere Feb. 1st, 2003. Very common for peices of air craft to break off when leaving and re-entering the Earths atmoshere. Perfection is hard to do, but even harder to maintain. Colombia Accident Board Report Vol.1: Two main factors for the crash 1. two peices of foam broke offseperated by big gas thrusters, and 2. one of those two peices went threw the wing. NASA did study on 19 missions and peices fell off of 90% of them. NASA safety systems not the best because of Money$$ constraints.

• The first topic was about product recalls. They talked about how to recall something or tell the manufacturer that the product is dangerous or doesn't work properly and that helps them in recalling their product. Some main recalls would be with car parts and children's products. The reason for this would be the danger it poses for people and children if the product doesn't work or breaks down easily. There are 1500 products recalled every year. They showed some clips on some products that were recalled and why they were. One was the baby carrier, where the handle would fold down and the baby could fall out and get hurt. Products get recalled everyday, so we have to pay attention to what is safe and look into what we buy before we buy it.

  The second topic was about the space program. She talked about how the process of launching space shuttles is not perfect and will never be. The example she talked about was the disaster of the shuttle, Columbia. Seven people died on the way back into orbit. They found that the insulation broke off during take off and hit a tank. The thermoprotection system was damaged and the wing of the shuttle started to melt and because of that the aerodynamics changed and they loss control. The process of a launch is not perfect , and things do go wrong but we need to check every angle and every possibility that could happened before we send our own people up to space. One thing that inhibits us is the cost but when you spend more the quality of the product will be better, I didn't say perfect but it will be better.

• In class we discussed design quality. Mostly product recalls and in our group we discussed how we hear of them mostly by way of letter or tv. We also thought that the recalls were numerous and varied in length or severty. We also noticed that the more severe a recall reason the more mentioned it is in the new or the more widespead the knowledge. One presenter also mentioned that only one flaw in the space shuttle would be enough to bring it down. And she expressed her opinion that the design of the Columbia was not adequate enough to stop the unknowable from happening.