Maintenance Mindset: How right to repair is revolutionizing McFlurry machine maintenance
Welcome to Maintenance Mindset, our editors’ takes on things going on in the worlds of manufacturing and asset management that deserve some extra attention. This will appear regularly in the Member’s Only section of the site.
For this edition of Maintenance Mindset, I wanted to cover some of the progress made in the United States by the right-to-repair movement. This topic is on my mind for two reasons, the first of which is that I have a three-year-old iPhone with a 30% degraded battery. I’d much prefer to replace the battery than replace the entire phone. However, replacing an iPhone battery is not a simple job. It’s delicate and requires tools that I don’t yet own, and the general speed of life with a job and three kids has made it a challenge to find the time to try battery replacement myself.
One thing I learned while writing this article is that opening up an iPhone and/or doing basic repairs to it does not violate the warranty. This is due to the existence of the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA) that was passed into law by the U.S. in 1975. In essence, the act says that you can open your electronics without voiding the warranty, regardless of what the language of that warranty says, and the act applies to all consumer devices that cost more than $15, including electronics. More specifically, according to an article in Vice, warranty conditions that forbid consumers from opening or repairing their devices are defined as illegal under a provision of the MMWA that forbids “tying,” meaning the conditions of the warranty “tie” the consumer to using a specific service or specific types of parts.
The other reason that right-to-repair is on my mind is the news this week that is about to impact broken McFlurry machines! According to Quartz, in October “the U.S. Copyright Office issued a key exemption that allows restaurants to sidestep digital locks, granting them the ‘right to repair’ machines embedded with software.” The ruling enables non-OEM technicians to repair McFlurry machines without the constraints imposed by Taylor, the manufacturing company responsible for their upkeep.
This is no small thing for both McDonald’s and industry. According to Wikipedia, as of 2021 the Taylor C602 was being used in more than 30% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide, and in 2000 an internal McDonald's survey revealed that a quarter of restaurants were reporting that the machines were nonfunctional. And the ruling specifically permits the repair of retail-level food preparation equipment, not just the infamous McFlurry machines, so you can expect better menu availability across the entire fast-food sector.
In general, the Right To Repair movement in the U.S. has been picking up steam, and is centered on three kinds of consumer equipment: vehicles, electronics, and farm machinery. Probably the most notable progress in this area came in early 2023, when John Deere agreed to give customers in the U.S. the right to fix their own equipment. As part of the agreement signed between the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) and Deere & Co., equipment owners and independent technicians will not be allowed to "divulge trade secrets" or "override safety features or emissions controls or to adjust Agricultural Equipment power levels" while giving equipment owners far more latitude in accessing information about their machines.
As for the consumer electronics market, repairing your own devices definitely will prolong their lifespan and reduce the expense of ownership. However, the bigger driver might be to help reduce the very high levels of ewaste currently being generated. The WEEE Forum estimates that around 16 lb of e-waste per person (or 61.3 million tons) was produced in 2023, and that only a fraction of this waste (17%) is collected and recycled correctly.
Currently, right to repair legislation has been passed in four states – California, Colorado, Minnesota, and New York – and is pending in many others. Also, several right to repair bills are currently being considered at the federal level, including one that is focused on equipment used by the U.S. military (even the DoD is constrained in this area).
Circling back to my iPhone, Apple did launch a self-service repair program for iPhones in 2022 but only after years of pressure from consumer groups. It still isn’t easy to make the repair, and my learning more about the MMWA didn’t give me any more time to fix my phone, or he confidence that I could make the repair without breaking something else in the phone (or losing one of the many tiny screws). But at least I learned that it’s possible, as plenty of YouTube videos illustrate. Now let’s see how many McFlurry machine videos pop up out there.
