Going frugal does not entail sacrificing Quality!!
A refrain I keep hearing when introducing frugal-engineering is poor quality. There is a misconception that one can go frugal in engineering by just skimping on quality. The Advanced Frugal Products (AFIs) appearing around the world attest to quality being paramount to frugal-engineering. Without good quality the EV onslaught, that I covered in the previous blog, would not occur. It is the creation of cheaper EVs giving “good performance” that is helping the concerned actors in the global markets. In fact, companies planning on low-cost products have to grapple with the issue of giving “more quality using lesser resources” whose success can be assured with systematic frugal engineering in all stages of product development.
The case of Tata Nano® is a good exercise in engineering AFIs. This was an amazing product that was nicely engineered under stringent resource constraints coming from the need to maintain lower costs. Yes, there were some early snags but these are expected of any product that is deemed to be a radical (and not incremental) innovation. The advanced-frugal-concept underlying the Tata Nano®, was transformative and, has led to the unleashing of compact cars by other well known companies.
Sacrificing quality would impair the diffusion of these products and that in turn might impair the progress of frugality in engineering and other modern areas. It is imperative to adopt frugal engineering since frugality is the need of the hour for combating climate change and related crises negatively affecting not least, our existence on this planet.
Going frugal is also challenging in that one has to work meticulously around constraints to succeed in engineering and other applications. Tools like the factor-of-frugality can aid in the systematic engineering of advanced-frugal-products for different sectors. Such rigorous application of frugal approaches for systematic creation of frugal products will ensure that quality is not compromised in going frugal.
