

Case Study: The IBM ProPrinter (1998) - brudgers
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Case-Study-The-IBM-Proprinter

======
mrbill
And a video of someone demonstrating this by putting a Proprinter back
together:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDYSKl3kmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDYSKl3kmo)

~~~
sjwright
That was a fascinating video. It starts a bit dry, so skip the first 2:30 if
you're not so interested in the business speak.

------
hapless
This IBM no longer exists, physically or spiritually.

Physically speaking: near as I can tell, the printer plants in Armonk, NY and
Charlotte, NC are long-shuttered. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, by
all means, post it.

Spiritually: The low-end printer division was part of the 1991 divestments. It
became part of Lexmark. As far as I know, Lexmark no longer manufactures
anything in the US. They just slap their name on various imported OEM designs.

p.s. This case study was written in 1998 about events in the late 1980s. The
Lexmark divestment had already occurred. The manufacturing capacity was
probably already dead before the study was published.

~~~
chiph
The Charlotte facility doesn't make printers any more (I worked nearby at
Wachovia/Wells Fargo CIC for a while).

A story I heard from an IBMer was that the robotic assembly systems weren't
ready at time of product launch, so they were hand-assembled using temp
workers. IBM thus discovered that designing for robotic assembly meant that
humans had a much easier time of building the product. They did eventually
install the robots to save on the labor cost, though.

I installed hundreds of those printers while on another contract. They were a
little dated by then, but still a solid office printer. We only had to replace
a few of them, and that was because of a lightning strike close by the
customer's office. Very reliable.

I don't miss the massive Centronics parallel cables one bit - what a pain it
was to route those things up from under people's desks.

------
TheLoneWolfling
> In order to reduce costs, plastic parts were incorporated into the
> Proprinter design.

This article pushes the pros of these decisions and not the cons.

As a result of similar decisions, you end up with devices being throw away
because the case had a single little plastic tab break.

As always, it is a tradeoff.

~~~
brudgers
The fact that they used plastic doesn't mean that the design was based on
disposablity. You can still purchase ancient working ProPrinters on Ebay and
there is still a long tail market for the [ribbons].

It was really HP that developed the throw away printer market with the Deskjet
600 series. The first generation Inkjets and second generation Deskjet 500's
were designed according to the principles that made HP a respected brand for
instruments and calculators.

[ribbons]:
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=ibm...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=ibm+proprinter+II+ribbon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=ibm+proprinter+II+ribbon&channel=fs&tbm=shop)

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
You combine two parts that can be replaced separately into one piece where if
one piece of it breaks the entirety of it has to be replaced, you're shifting
the repair<->dispose spectrum towards disposablity.

Reliability is orthogonal to repairability.

~~~
brudgers
I understand what you are saying. I believe that in terms of the life-cycle of
any mechanical system, repairability and reliability asymptotically become
synonyms. Combining two parts into one favors repair because the logistics of
stocking parts is simplified and repairs are simpler.

Provided of course that the goal of combining the parts is benevolent, e.g.
that the two parts tend to wear at about the same rate.

In terms of printers, the reliability issues aren't plastic parts. They are:

    
    
       sticky liquids running in an open loop system in
       and around opto-electrical controlled mechanisms.
    
       pretending ordinary users interacting with such
       a system is going to provide reliability.
    
       pretending that paper is dimensionally stable
       under changing humidity.
    

Early HP consumer inkjets were reliable because the cartridge was electronics,
ink, and printhead. It was the only thing that could go bad other than paper
handling.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Combining two parts into one part when one of them is much more complex than
the other does not favor repair.

If it was combining two parts that tended to fail at about the same time
together? Sure. But the provided example isn't one of those cases.

It favors replacement. Consider it taken to a logical extreme - every item is
throwaway. That's not what most people would consider repairable, and yet,
under your definition of repairability, it's the most repairable system there
is (as anything can be "repaired" with one swap). So I disagree with your
definition.

I disagree with your assertion that "in terms of the life-cycle of any
mechanical system, repairability and reliability asymptotically become
synonyms". My parent's current car is a whole lot more reliable than the
clunker they used to had - but on the flip side it's a whole lot less
repairable. In other words, it takes longer to break, but when it does it's a
whole lot harder (and more expensive) to return to a working state.

And I agree regarding printer cartridges - the current system is insane. That
being said, current printer cartridges are an example of the end result of the
same sort of thinking that ends up replacing a separate spring with an
integrated one.

~~~
brudgers
The [Ship of Theseus] is an ancient paradox. Compressing the time scale to a
single instant just shows the flexibility of language and the overlap of our
concepts. My clothes dryer is reliable in the sense that I can disassemble it
and replace the heat coils and bearings and belts. When repairs are finished
it is the same clothes dryer. If I had purchased a new white good unit, it
would be a different dryer and if it could not be repaired it would be less
reliable than which could.

Because by reliability we imply use. A Ferrari that is not driven does not
thereby become reliable. It becomes a hanger queen.

[Ship of Theseus]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Ancient_phil...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Ancient_philosophy)

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
The distinction is:

If you take a printer, and replace part A, and a time later replace part B,
and a time later replace part A again, you've thrown out three parts - 2 of A
and 1 of B.

If you take a printer, and A is broken so you replace the printer, and a time
later A is broken again, so you replace the printer again, you've thrown out
two entire printers.

These are not the same.

------
smoyer
WIP = Work In Progress ... it's an accounting term and usually represents the
amount of money that's held up longer than your fiscal month.

Great article though. I remember those printers well.

