Comment by servo_sausage

History of manafacturing philosophy is a pretty interesting lens;

I once had the chance to chatt with an old German colleague about the change in mentality over multiple decades. One thing he highlighted was the change from "lower error rate equals less waste, and higher final sale price" to "customer complaints or defect rates should be above a threshold, otherwise we are investing too much in the process control".

Particularly due to the desire to derisk the process; design by collaboration with the end user, and contracts with quality requirements, rather than the design being owned by the manufacturer.