Are lifetime warranties a liability or a selling point? by Huw Jones

Automated gates are unreliable. As the cost of an engineer on the road increases, automation designers need to reduce unscheduled & uncosted visits by improving reliability.

Buy a Mercedes and you buy millions of hours of component testing, decades of experience, and a quality inspector at every stage. As a bespoke machine, an automated gate may have proven components, but QA is down to the installer.

Service managers send engineers for maintenance visits, but are they cost effective? There are no regular oil changes like a car. Vibration and closing impacts will loosen bolts that need to be checked, ground settling could require some re-alignment, and electronic adjustment of speeds and limits.

Such adjustments may be beneficial, but don’t address the failure that can take a gate out of service. We need to design out the weaknesses that give electric gates a bad name.

The bathtub curve, named for its shape, describes failures against time. The highest risks are at the beginning and end of life. The client’s perception of ‘Normal Life’ period is how you present your warranty. ‘Wear-out’ is how you serve your client after the warranty.

Reliability begins at home. Most infant mortality is avoided if a gate is pre-assembled and tested in the workshop. Clients may forgive a gate being a week late, but won’t forgive a gate that fails in the first week. Motors and control panels that survive a week of testing are more likely to have a full life.

Workshop testing also allows wiring and configuration to be proven. The gate can be quality control assessed and pre-commissioned by the most experienced technician. Clients can be invited to review the project, and request functional changes implemented in a QA environment. Workshop time is not compromised by short days, bad weather, or transport problems, let alone the cost of re-work on site.

Wear-out. The onset of mechanical wear period is extended by getting the right balance of cost v durability. The cost of a bigger motor or heavier duty wheel bearing is relatively low.

What is the client’s perception of the ‘Normal Life’ period? In the 70’s Ford made Cortina’s to last 5 years. MG & KIA give a 7 year warranty in an industry where every dollar matters. There is no excuse for cutting corners on a bespoke gate. This is where you pitch your warranty period.

There is no shame in giving separate warranties for motor life (say 10,000 operations), wheel bearing life, and warranty on electronic components. It shows a realistic assessment of lifetime. If each component can be attributed a lifetime and replacement cost. Long warranty terms on low risk is a good opportunity to lock in the client to a maintenance contract for decades to come.

Conclusions. Warranty is a reflection of your confidence in your product and service. Build in longer life, and easy low-cost replacement of wearable components. Clients will respond well to an honest assessment of long-term costs.

The future. This article has been about the value of good engineering for an extended ‘Normal Life’. The future lies with M2M reporting. The machine will track component wear and book in an engineer’s visit!