Last month, I spoke about an old gentleman mechanic and his reliance on intuition and experience to diagnose certain manufacturer’s classic vehicles faults. I also spoke about his aversion to using relevant technology tools for fault diagnosis.
My investigation vindicated the old man’s aversion to diagnostic tools. In the previous article, you will recall I mentioned that the good old mechanic specialises in a certain manufacturer’s gasoline-engine vehicles. The old man’s aversion is attributable to the manufacturer driven by unquenchable desire to capture the customer market and thwart customers’ reliance on independent service repairers like him.
I now question the value of having vehicle manufacturers voluntarily taking up membership with Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE) for standards when they do not fully comply with their published standards. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 30 April 2021.
On quick reflection, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services is the most open of industries in promoting and using open standards for its members and public alike. Perhaps the Engineering sector is second, with the third closest being Financial Services in openness.
In Financial Services Industry, whenever new standards are proposed and accepted by members, there is relentless desire to want to adhere to them. Once adopted, one can expect related institutions enforcing same standards without fail. However, we should not be easily fooled by this as it seems their general compliance and voluntary enforcement is for standards beneficial only to closed members and not the public. Open banking standards remain a pipedream for many entrepreneurs wanting access to Financial Services to offer direct competitive offerings to mainstream providers.
The banking sector needs to be more open to approved members of the public wishing to consume or interact with them. Open banking standards exist to facilitate such interactions, however their adoption by members, particularly in South Africa, is almost nonexistent. The United Kingdom remains the leader in the adoption of open banking standards, thereby enabling many nontraditional banking organisations to participate in the sector offering even more compelling competitive consumer services.
The ICT industry’s open standards and open-source products need no additional mentioning as it is now common knowledge about the extent of progress this sector has achieved and advanced for anyone, not only members, to adopt, integrate and use any solutions incorporating commonly published open standards.
The Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE), founded by Andrew Ricker and Henry Ford in 1905[1], is the motor industry’s equivalent of the financial industry’s open banking standards. Unlike the banking sector, SAE standards have greatly enabled ordinary consumers, enthusiasts and independent repair shops access information closed to vehicle manufacturers. Hence my assertion that the IT sector is the undisputed leader in open standards, followed closely by the engineering then the financial sector.
Back to the good old mechanic story. His aversion to diagnostic scanners for this vehicle manufacturer was easily demonstrated by refitting worn-out and faulty ignition coils and performing a scan. Instead of the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) issuing a relevant and widely known SAE Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) for misfiring, the OEM chose to only issue their proprietary fault code with a meaningless description of the fault on a nonOEM Onboard Diagnostic tool scanner. It simply read, “Flight recorder data is stored”, and we were not any wiser searching that OEM community of interest forum for the meaning of that fault code. The closest to the explanation we got was that the fault was triggered only if there were some engine stalling or failure to start error.
Had the OEM used well-published SAE standards for that “misfire”, they would have been forced to specify the cylinder responsible for the misfire. But the OEM chose to be proprietary and deny relatively inexperienced repair technicians, much less, vehicle owners and enthusiasts wanting to limit upselling by repair shops, the knowledge of the exact fault with their vehicles. The old man then told me that that kind of behaviour was just an example of the “irrelevance” of the OBD tool to him, and that there were many other errors the manufacturer has made proprietary instead of using the open SAE standards. He further told me that this OEM only reports insignificant faults under the SAE standard and keeps the rest proprietary.
The old man clearly demonstrated to me why institutional and old knowledge was fundamental and that technology does not necessarily result in better solutions if the right problem and its resolution have not been identified.
I want to believe the OEM deliberately flouted the SAE standards to promote their proprietary ones to force independent repairs service providers to always consult and “clear things” with them at a fee. I can defend this assertion sternly because arguments that the OEM does not want chance takers tinkering with their vehicles only serves to deny vehicle owners the right to know the nature of the exact fault with their vehicles, for which they could be rightly advised to consult their service providers.
Nevertheless, I do not blame the OEM entirely either for the stance taken as there must be a price and some return for possession of institutional knowledge.
If so, what purpose does voluntary membership to standards bodies serve if standards published do not carry any legal force? The financial sector is a classic example of this. Outsiders are, well, kept out and only members enjoy using common standards and mechanisms such as APIs for exchanging information. Outsiders without an insider as their sponsor have to “force” things by creating standalone solutions, and only when they have gained mass consumer support would Financial Services players “open up” to them. Their “turf” is indeed fiercely protected leaving only a jungle for survival of the fittest prevalent.
Public sector is the worst collaborator and citizens could be well served if there were reasonable levels of openness enabling independent players integrate their services with public sector’s. The approach could provide the state an easier avenue to reducing cost of operations and increase modernisation of services and infrastructure. But, no, someone somewhere still believes in a winner takes all and total ownership for total control than in shared resources for improved leverage.
A day will rise one day, hopefully soon, for enforcement of responsible openness that promotes advancement of life on this planet.
[1] Source https://www.sae.org
