Remembering Harold Ralph
My grandfather worked for the Ford Motor Company. It was the only company he ever worked for in his entire career. Once we were talking about the success of the Japanese auto industry and how that came about. I was young and don’t remember most of what he said. What I do remember is he told me he went to Japan to see what they had been up to and was amazed when he saw a steel so thin, yet so strong, a man could push it out of shape with his fist. But it didn’t break. I don’t know what that’s called in engineering terms, when the strength of something doesn’t come from how thick it is, but the shape of it. My Grandfather said that was the beginning of the Japanese success in the auto industry, the success of their steel industry. He said, at the time, we couldn’t do anything like it.
I don’t know whether he was right about the reasons for Japanese automotive success. I do know what he was describing was the pursuit of excellence in their steel industry. In comparison the success of American industry seems to have been based largely on the idea of “good enough”. As inventors of mass production, production for the masses, inherent was an idea it didn’t have to be perfect. Aristocracy can afford perfect, the rest of us put up with good enough.
As an industry matures the benefits of getting a product to market quickly at a decent price fades. Once everyone can make a quality product at a decent price “good enough” engineering isn’t much of a benefit. In the end it’s a liability. In the mid 1980’s Tom Peters & Robert Waterman wrote the management icon In Search of Excellence. Now rated as one of the greatest management books of all time, they were twenty years too late for the US auto industry.
It’s my opinion our industry is beset on every side by this malaise of “good enough” engineering. Software development seems defined by it. Our saving grace has been to keep technology changing so fast that nothing matures. But the signs are around that some things are maturing in spite of us. Customers are starting to outsource because they are sick of the ‘problems’. Problems that are lock stock and barrel included in “good enough” engineering. Apple are now driving the industry by selling products that “just work”. We’ve managed to keep technology fast moving, but the long term cost of good enough engineering is customer exhaustion.
On the one hand technology has surged in the last twenty years, taking us to new heights. On the other hand nothing has changed, most things are still poorly designed and wear nonsensical interfaces. Spam and threats grow like cancer around us but we’re stuck in a time vortex of “good enough”.
People are over it. A call for good engineering beckons gently on the wind. It’s quiet but it’s there. I hope it’s heard.
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