The manufacture of home devices to be used in household work is of comparatively recent development, and the growth of the industry has been so rapid that many manufacturers are still groping to establish standards that will meet the new and uncertain conditions under which
their products must be used.
Dealers in household equipment as well as manufacturers are still uncertain as to what constitutes the selling value of an article, because it has been impossible to predicate the conditions, the care, and the skill with which each device would be used after it was marketed. It is comparatively easy for designer and factory manager to guard against known conditions of use. The dishwashing machine for a hotel or restaurant service can be built to perform with satisfactory efficiency. Its operating purposes and costs are known, the skill of its operators is more or less established, and the materials can be so selected to result in a satisfactory life of the machine.
It is a different story when the manufacturer's product is to be used in the typical @American home. Household equipment of every type must be made so that it will prove adaptable to different service conditions, with regard to both homes and actual users. An even more important consideration is intermittent use that must be met successfully by all home devices. It is the unusual home in which washing is done more than once or twice a week. The balance of the time the machine must stand idle. And this is true of practically every other type of labor saving device. It represents the most difficult of conditions a factory product has to face.
In dealing with this most important subject, the Good Housekeeping Institute is offering valuable facts that have been established through fifteen years of experience in testing household equipment, and it is further utilizing the viewpoint of thousands of consumers and dealers who have come for a conference either in person or by letter.
POINTS OFTEN OVERLOOKED BY MANUFACTURERS
It is not too much to say that in general the manufacturer wants to produce the article that the consumer wants to buy. In many cases the reason he does not accomplish it is due to the fact that he does not divide his expenditures wisely. He neglects to pay the price for the highest grade skill in designing and he markets his product too quickly.
The importance of developing a specific design cannot be overestimated. No machine on the market, of any type, is one hundred per cent perfect and none on the market should, therefore, be taken as a standard to be met by the new manufacturer. It is a patchwork, only, that is obtained by one common method used to obtain a newly designed machine. Namely, the manufacturer purchases every type of machine, already marketed to perform a given work, and adapts one part from one machine, another part from a second machine and perhaps still another part from a third machine. Such a design must always be a compromise, and it is seldom possible to obtain the original working efficiency of the several parts in the new machine because of the necessary compromises.
A second point that the manufacturer is apt to overlook is the importance of including the most minute of details in his general high standard of manufacture. For instance, he elects to use copper for a water container, but he forgets to provide that every bolt and rivet and screw, no matter how small, shall be of a rust-resisting metal. The small part capable of rusting is as much an eyesore to the purchaser and in certain conditions can do as great damage as though the manufacturer had not spent the major sum to insure his rust-resisting container.
And a third point: sometimes a manufacturer neglects to make certain of a perfection of detail in the factory that will produce one hundred per cent uniformity in his product. Thus vacuum cleaner manufacturers, merely by installing an equipment that would measure for them, under actual conditions of service, the correct air displacement of the particular machine tested, could eliminate any possibility of lack of uniformity in their product. Further, it would take no more time for the inspection than is at present accorded to the routine reading of current consumption. Yet up to this time we know of no vacuum cleaner factory that has installed this comparatively simple and inexpensive equipment.
