The "Build Quality" Debate

During the rounds I have noticed one particular topic that keeps resurfacing, this little concept called
“build quality”. I imagine this stems from the interest in the recent influx of international manufacturers into the motorcycle market, which is putting the heat onto our long serving American, Japanese and European manufacturers.

So what is "build quality"? To keep it simple, let's assume it is essentially product quality - which is normally measured by customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is pretty subjective, hence why "quality" has many measures.

I believe there are three main components of product quality:

(1) The quality of the product design
(2) The quality of the product assembly
(3) The quality of the materials used for the construction of the product and its components.

The first is a no-brainer. Bad design equals poor performance. The thing you build has to actually work for you to be able to sell it as the thing you claim it to be.

The second is what most people refer to as "build quality", which I believe is an incomplete definition. If I put a box of lego and some instructions in front of my 7 year old, given some time she would be able to assemble that object just as well as I could. So let's extrapolate this principle. Assuming similar skills and conditions, you could assemble a motorcycle pretty much anywhere in the world and achieve the same result, right? Of course you could. So why is that 5 year old chinese bike rusting to hell and breaking components while my 30 year old Japanese bike is hardly showing its age? The answer may just lie in item (3).

To start with, let's take a look at some basic engineering of stainless steels:



Probably the most common stainless steels are 304 and 316. So you can understand the table above, 304 stainless steel is typically about 18.5% chromium, 9% Nickel and 0.06% Carbon.

Adding Carbon - Lowers corrosion resistance
Adding Molybdenum - Enhances pitting corrosion resistance
Adding Nickel - Improves stress corrosion cracking resistance
Adding Chromium - Improves overall resistance

In summary, by changing the ratios of the elements in the steel, you are essentially changing the steel's performance (primarily the mechanical properties). This is important to understand because to keep steels within ideal composition tolerance limits it is simply more expensive to manufacture. This can be why the same grades of steel from Australia (compliant with the stringent Australian Standards) can perform differently to those manufactured elsewhere (eg China).

To an extent you could argue that China has cheaper labor hence its steel is cheaper. This is only a minor influence though, as within steel manufacture the cost savings are in refining the composition of the steel itself and how well those components are machined to their tolerances.

So in terms of build quality, you must consider three things:

1) The Design
2) The Construction of that Design
3) The Composition of the Components (including tolerances) and Materials Used for that Design.

This isn't meant to be a swipe at any manufacturers though. Designs can be shared, the right instructions with similar skills can result in equal construction, but the cost savings are in the tolerances and composition of the components.

Conclusion: You get what you pay for.

 

There is also plenty of marketing BS I think all riders have to sift through when purchasing bikes.

So many companies get paid to review bikes and when they do, they are expected to give "good" reviews. If they didn't, how could they expect repeat business? If you ever read "professional" reviews, anything bad is usually softened or played down so that the positives at least equal the negatives. And this is where people get fooled into believing that the "build quality" of some bikes (a term used so freely yet not entirely correctly) is somehow at the benchmark of other bikes. This is a blatant misrepresentation, but may not necessarily be intentional - and does not apply to just bikes.

For example, one of my friends purchased a 2005 Hyosung GT250R. Nice enough bike to ride, I enjoyed taking it for a spin a couple of times. But for a bike 18 months old (at that time) it (1) snapped a clutch cable (2) had moderate pitting rust on the wheels and the fork assembly and (3) snapped the springs in the front shocks. He sold it shortly after the third occurred, although it was warranty related the future prospects weren't making him feel comfortable. In contrast, I bought a 1992 Kawasaki ZZR250 for around $2K less than him. Absolutely no issues, I couldn't even find any rust. I'm not saying this will be the same for everyone but here is a classic example of differing "build quality".

Just something to think about. It took many years for "Jap Crap" to stop being crap, and I anticipate it will take other manufacturers similar amounts of time to achieve the same result. Until then, choose wisely.

 

The other thing you have to consider regarding build quality is the way the company is run. For example, there have been several well known manufacturing innovations to come out of Japan, such as KAIZEN and KANBAN.

KANBAN is a manufacturing control system built around "Lean" and "Just in time" manufacturing. It is basically an system devised to maintain high production efficiency, and its effects flow into systematic measures to maintain product quality.

KAIZEN is a mainly a lean manufacturing method with drivers founded in continuous improvement. It is a mentality taught to everyone from production level to senior level, with some focus on specialization and standardisation of tasks. It essentially creates "experts" in particular manufacturing processes or procedures, so rather than being a "jack of all trades and a master of none" people are much more capable of achieving and maintaining high quality and efficiency by focusing on fewer areas and optimising/refining them. It's very clever and I'm a big advocate of it.

It shows how far Japan has come though, they're a clever nation and the way they run manufacturing businesses has in many ways set the benchmark for the rest of the world. They pride themselves on quality, and if you've ever worked with a Japanese arm of a business you will quickly understand how pedantic and particular they are about getting things done right. It definitely lays the expectation that what they manufacture is now close to, or as good as, they're ever going to get it. Because if they haven't got there yet they'd certainly know what they have to do to get there. It may be hard to fathom, but if any nation "lives and breathes" quality, it's them.

 

I think you've made an interesting point there Murdo. But I think it just may be a little more far-reaching than that. When you're dealing with products, although price is a factor - it is not the only factor. Clever marketing can also drive up, or maintain high prices. Price is a reasonable benchmark of quality but you also have to be careful you're not paying for a brand. Take Harleys for example and their high pricing. Is a harley bike a better quality performer than say a suzuki boulevard of similar capacity? I would argue not. But the Harley's have an image and trademark sound about them, and that's one of the reasons you pay more for them.