Re: Shouldn\'t Manufactures be Members?
I suspect that lots of the manufacturer's employees read this site, but few, if any, will ever post. The reason is that most of those employees probably like thier jobs. They can't go on this website and give out information for several reasons. First being that whatever they posted on this website would become "factual" information, and would constantly be referred to as "so-and-so from John Deere said xxxxxx". Then when someone higher up at JD said "no", there would be a big problem and fire fighting to keep down the negative impact resulting from the apparent change of plans. Second, when you work on something for a living, that last thing you want to do is debate or argue about it with someone who has no idea how it actually works. Not to belittle the membership here with this statement, but that's just the way it is. Third, if someone identified themselves as an employee of a large Ag manufacturer, they would probably get lots complaints like "why did you do this", "why did you do that", don't you know anything", etc.
How do I know this? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif Well, because, I run the USA based mechanical engineering dept for a large, international, marine electronics manufacturer. I go on the boating and fishing websites regularly to see what's going on, and what people like, and what they think of the products I'm responsible for, etc. These types of websites are good for getting some field data on actual performance and whether or not the product is doing what I intended it to do. However, alot of the good info is drown out in a sea of misinformation that is broadcast by those who are armed with opinion, rather than fact. You will get two people arguing different opinions on how a piece of equipment works, and both of them wrong. I used to try to nicely offer an explanation on how the item they are debating actually works, but normally that just got me flamed for something or another because I had the "gall" to question the "elder member's" experience. Well, I designed the product they were arguing about, so quite frankly, I DO know more about it then they ever will. LOL. I just won't get into the middle of those debates anymore, and as an employee, you cannot let those debates become a matter of pride and then offend everyone and hurt your employer's reputation. Often on those sites I will now post generic tech information, like answering NMEA type questions or explaining test specifications (IPX, JIS, CFR), etc. I don't touch the "why my Furuno is better than your Simrad" type threads (I don't work for either of those companies I just mentioned). Also, one really good aspect of these websites are when a user has a very specific problem related to one of my products, and they post about it on the internet, I can call my warranty dept on the phone and say "yeah, someone fron ______ sent in an ______ a couple days ago, and the problem seems kind of wierd because I've never seen it before, can you figure out which unit it is based on the problem description and vague customer info and send that unit to me, I want to take it apart". My engineering group does this somewhat often. Typically the customer just gets a brand new unit sent to them as a replacement, the customer is happy to have a new unit, and we identify either an anomoly or a legitimate problem which can be fixed.
Anyway, I guess I'm rambling now.
