There is nothing wrong with frugality, and I believe that plays into the buy or keep decision. It really isn’t as simple as being cheap or buying a reliable vehicle. That’s really where I was going, but I want to have a little fun with it before explaining more completely. IMO, Daewoo shows up on the list because a lot of people can’t afford anything more reliable. Any Daewoo old enough to show up on this list is from the time before GM bought them and straightened them out, starting in 2001. If keeping a vehicle longer than 15 years is one of the key decision parameters, Toyota would have been at the top of the list 15 to 20 years ago.
On another subject brought up in this thread, I don’t compare the reliability of my cars over time. Reliability has improved so much that complaining about low reliability for my Fords (mid-70s Capri V6, 1987 Taurus, 1997 Windstar) to my later vehicles doesn’t make sense because Ford and every other manufacturer got better over time. I won’t buy a Ford because of those problems, but it is more of an emotional reaction than a rational one.
Was the guy teaching the course a former manager in manufacturing?
There’s an old axiom that 80% of all problems trace directly back to management. I think the axiom is being kind to management. Having spent over twenty years in manufacturing, many of them in management, I think 99% is more accurate.
I’m not letting management off the hook but management didn’t put a beer bottle hidden by sheet metal to cause a rattle, or put a Volarie emblem on one side and an Aspen emblem on the other on the same car on the same assembly line. Management didn’t cause workers to blow smoke in the parking lot at lunch either. Just sayin’ is all.
Management didn’t mis-Pontiac on a friends 1970 something. Most people didn’t even notice it actually read Ponitac. We originally thought maybe it could have happened if the car was repainted or something. When he started to switch offending letters the paint was faded you would see the faded parts. Also the car had not been repainted.
Often large industrial corporations develop an “us against them” culture that results in each side blaming the other for all the problems. And when high school drop outs working in a plant earn considerably more than most salaried lower and even mid management personnel due to union contracts the pent up hostility can become explosive. My experience years ago working in an entry level management job at a business with 40+ Teamsters was enlightening with respect to both sides of the cultural divide.
Millions of cars are produced, and in the '70s and '80s particularly, when union negotiations were ongoing pending strikes, some individuals on the assembly lines did some nasty things. Such incidents are well documented.
However those incidents are not the reason the “big three” faltered. And they’re not the reason for the differences in quality between manufacturers. The issues are much, much, much bigger than a few individuals taking out their anger with juvenile pranks.
When I started working in the steel mill in 1974, there was definitely an us vs. them attitude on both sides. It was like cops and robbers. Eventually, both sides recognized that overseas competition was eating our lunch and they started working together more often.
My experience with the Teamsters was at a wholesale metals supply corporation during the price fixing of the Nixon administration and although I was written up by the union twice they lost both their arguments and I developed a good relationship with the union steward resulting in my becoming the de facto liaison from upstairs to the shop.
And Chinese steel was becoming a real issue with Nixon appearing to favor Chinese metal shutting down USSTeel. It became impossible to get guaranteed delivery of domestic boiler plate at any price while China seemed to have a boat load waiting off shore whenever ordered. The economic decline of middle class working Americans seemed to have begun with the NIxon administration’s efforts to micromanage the economy while opening trade with China.
Yes…those incidents have happened. One or two happen, then it’s and individual issue…but when hundreds or thousands of those things happen then it’s a MANAGEMENT issue. Management needs to educate their workers properly. Union or not, incidences of individual sabotage should be extremely low.
Conclusion…99.999999999999% of quality problems is blamed directly on Management. And you can follow the chain all the way up.
I feel sure that I have mentioned working for a non union tire factory 50 years ago and from first hand knowledge I can assure any who are curious that when given the opportunity management can and often is quite tyrannical, denigrating and petty. It is certain that if I posted some of the language here that was commonly thrown at employees at that time my welcome would be revoked. A great deal that management was doing at that time was unethical and immoral and often illegal but in this “right to work” state many people, desperate for a job to support their families put up with it. Younger workers however, especially those in difficult to replace skills, were open to listening to the URW and after more than a year of hostile confrontations voted in the union. Management’s plantation mentality cost them dearly.
That happens with some managers. I can think of three in my previous place of employment, but since there were about 50 managers there, the percentage is low. When I worked in the steel mill, there was one foreman in my group that was tyrannical, and 7 other managers that were not. The hourly guys used to torment that one bad foremen constantly. They would set him up to do something incorrectly and then submit a grievance against him. They always won, of course. The other managers, including the other first line foremen, tried to straighten him out, but he didn’t want any coaching.
I guess I was just reacting to statements where the problems are always management or always labor or always unions, (or at least 80-99% of the time). I’m just not sure there is always a single causal effect for failure. While you can blame management for everything from product planning to finance to assembly etc., sometimes the playing field just can’t be leveled regardless of the quality of management.
When you look at Chrysler, their failure was a lack of sales. What caused a lack of sales? Styling and product offerings? Dealership issues? Competition? Quality control? When you don’t have sales, money is tight and then you do all kinds of things to save money or delay payments. Lee came up with a new product line and that helped for a while, but new and exciting products are expensive and takes heavy sales to support them. The over-bearing auto workers union, like the teamsters didn’t help any either. And there are good unions and bad unions and good workers and bad workers.
Then again when you look at the number of major car companies compared to the 1970’s, I think competition is a big factor with only so many slices of the pie to go around. I’m not letting our government off the hook either with changes in fuel regulations that gave a competitive advantage to the foreign manufacturers. If Nixon was bad for the steel industry, he probably was not good for our auto industry either. I have mixed feelings about him and his crazy 55 mph speed limit but he did end the war after tricking Johnson.
I’m just saying its not so simple to blame management. I myself have not really experienced much bad management in manufacturing.
I spent my entire career in higher education. I understand bad managers from having to work with university administrators. I had to deal with quite a few of them that didn’t understand the process of education. Many of them found a way into administration because they were ineffective teachers. I was once offered an administrative position and turned it down even though my salary would have been better. I could have done a.year’s work in this position in less than a week. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the remaining 51 weeks in the year. It always seemed to me that a university administrator should have been a successful professor to understand what education is all about. In a similar vein, it would seem to me that a manager in a manufacturing environment should understand the product. Back in the 1950s, General Motors was run by automobile men. The Chevrolet V-8 engine, introduced in 1955, was designed by automobile men who ran GM. When the bean counters took.over, problems started. The Corvair, in my opinion, was a great design, but the bean counters in management left out a camber compensator spring in the rear suspension. I owned a 1961 Corvair and bought the transverse spring for less than $15 from J. C. Whitney. I installed it in about 20 minutes and had a great handling car for the time period. Management, not the workers marketed the Vega. Back in the 1930s, a manager at Packard had to start out on the assembly line, regardless of how much education he had, so that he would know what went into making the car.
One movie scene that I think spells out some of the problems in educating managers is in the movie “Back to School” starring Rodney Dangerfield. The character played by Rodney Dangerfield is in a business economics class. The Professor designs a theoretical factory. The character played by Rodney Dangerfield, points out the flaws in the professor’s economic model for the factory. Unfortunately, this scene is probably all too true.
At my university, the department head seemed to be in charge of finding money for research if the professors didn’t find enough. That seems like a full time job. I was a student as not close to that end of higher education, but that’s how it seemed to me.
@jtsanders I think your perception is correct. When I began my career as a faculty member in 1965, I was told that excellent teaching was expected. Research was fine as long as it didn’t interfere with teaching. When I retired in 2011, research was more important than teaching. As long as we kept the lid on in the classroom, the teaching was satisfactory. We were expected to bring in grant money from which the institution takes off 46% for “overhead”. This supports administrators. Before I retired, a group of my colleagues wanted me as department chair. They had the votes to elect me to this position. I turned them down. There was no way I would browbeat my colleagues into bringing in funding at the expense of teaching.
I think our next scandal in this country is going to occur in higher education if it hasn’t happened already.
Teaching was important at my school too. Every professor had to teach at least one class, at least in my department. One Israeli professor claimed he didn’t speak English well enough to teach so he had his graduate assistant lecture and teach the labs. I never had trouble understanding, though. I had no issues with the graduate assistant. He was excellent.
A lot of professors at major universities are there for their ability to get grants. They use “teaching assistants” to teach the classes. Having done the grant thing, I can tell you that it’s 80% hard work and 90% politics. You may wonder about this. Well, a great deal of the work is politics.
Universities vie for “name” people, like former U.S. Senators and Congressmen. They possess the private cell phone number of a lot of people who influence the appropriation of grant funds.
It’s reality. If you were an administrator with an open position, would you rather hire someone noted for being a great teacher or someone who can bring in multimillion dollar grants… and then use some of the money to hire teaching assistants?
I’m not defending the system. Only offering my 2 cents.
