Originally Posted by
Campag4life
How can I possible respond without lowering decorum on the forum. So I just can't address all the things you wrote without it sounding like a diatribe of repudiation.
Can't respond to your incendiary attack because incompatible with forum guidelines.
In bold, simply because I see it too often and have lived it. A rerun that never ends. Same reason that NASA killed those astronauts with space shuttle Columbia. Incompetence in part but generally somebody knows that story going in. Countless designs are released in spite of knowing the technical risk and greed is always at the core. There is a saying perhaps you have heard, that at some point in a project life, the engineer has to be killed the project released. Many designs are ill fated and to me...perhaps you differ on the FS, but to me the design is very poor. This is my opinion. The point of the forum is to share our opinions. Perhaps you like the FS and Specialized carbon OSBB on their S-works that they finally discontinued or the bad brakes on the VIAS...or maybe you work at Specialized and you know they were shipping bad forks on their new Allez redesign which is a repeat of previous gen Tarmac fork failures which they should have learned their lesson. As you know, there is a discipline all the critical path of development of all of this...what a DFMEA is for and all the disciplines put in place to prevent failures in the field.
I probably shouldn't dignify your comments because they weren't nice, but objectively how I feel. People know better and yet do the wrong thing. The engineers at Specialized know exactly what is going on with every product. Yes, once in a blue moon they are caught by surprise. Or a supplier lets them down and incoming inspection misses a critical check which robs functionality out in the field. But designs get release to all the FS owners here and it turns out to be a lottery of which ones will work versus not and just aint cool for those that lose the bike lottery.
This isn't a bad response...I appreciate the decorum...
My post above is not intended to be incendiary, but observational. And it is 'designed' to cause you some reflection on how your posts are perceived by me and ostensibly others - I have taken care to try not to overreach into maliciousness. I do not have the benefit of knowing you or your experiences personally, and can only take your posts at face value.
The possibilities of greed and corruption of which you speak are not impossible. Consider that it might be a stretch, and is at the very least an uninformed guess from the cheap seats when it comes to this specific case. I think it borders on conspiracy-theorist to liken the gravity of releasing a new suspension design to corruption that may have led to the death of astronauts.
Corruption shouldn't be your first 'go-to'...it is why there exists Professional Engineering licensure in many western jurisdictions. To neglect such defects is often punishable by law. I am a licensed Professional Engineer and this is strong component of the judgment exercised in any application where human safety hangs in the balance. Understand that product development is hard to get perfectly right, and small design errors and oversights become amplified once things hit production. Consider that not everyone is experiencing issues at this time with their FS bikes which should highlight the possibility that under the controlled conditions of pre-production, such a (hypothetical) flaw may have gone undetected.
If you think it's easy to get it perfectly right, you aren't experienced enough in design. Often the more successful your products, the more likely you are to quickly learn their shortcomings, notwithstanding their excellence (see bending iPhone 6).
Consider the impact of human cognitive bias, especially in the use of DFMEA. To quote Daniel Kanheman,
What you see is all there is. Nowhere is this more true than in DFMEA or PFMEA. You are almost completely perfect at controlling for those failure modes that you can identify. Upon completion of your analysis, you are now falsely assured that you are safe from those Black Swans that are inherently unknowable or not previously observed.
I would simply advise that you tone down the attribution part of your posts, and leave it to your expert dissection of the components. Avoid the condescending tone if you want others to absorb the technical value you are trying to provide.