I apologize to everyone for having “lost my cool”. I was just at the end of my rope.
You’re right Dag, time for us to get back to cars.
Peace to everyone.
5% of 534,000 is 26700 defective parts
That would have been acceptable for US manufacturers in the 1950s . . . ?
“wow”
@docnick
I haven’t done the research of late and hope I’m nit imaginng this but I do remember that Subaru was given a free rain in not having to compete with other Japanese made cars for x numbers of years making Awd cars. This did not include SUVs but was restricted to cars and why the Outback was always a raised wagon and not an SUV. Prior to that, the Corolla made a 4wd early, then it just disappeared from the market even though in Maine, they were very popular. The only 4 wd cars available from Japanese manufactures was the Subaru. To keep from failing, It was determined that Subaru would have that market with no competition from Honda, Toyota or Nissan who were forbidden to make them. SO, there is little wonder why Subaru specialized and became the state care of northern states. The Japanese govt. gave them a head start. At least that is the story I think I heard…lif I wasn’t dreaming at the time.
The competition is now coming through the back door by the way of compact SUVs which are indistinquisable from raised wagons.
There seems to be a lot more cooperation between Japanese manufacturers then American in sharing competition, engineering and technology in general early on. Now I think sharing engineering happens quite frequently everywhere.
5% of 534,000 is 26700 defective parts
Back in the 80’s…30% defects was the norm for computer chips. But at least it’s a work or fail part. Either it works flawlessly or years and years and years…or it doesn’t work and is very easy to detect right within minutes of testing.
Lucas instruments in the 60s had a 30% reject rate at the manufacturing stage! The ones that were shipped worked, but due to very poor quality control in materials and manufacturing, some lasted only a very short time in the cars.
When I was a student I rode home for the holidays with a classmate who had an Austin A-40 with Lucas instruments. We hit a small pothole and everything went dark. We made it home, lucky not to get run over. The nickname “Prince of Darkness” was coined in Britain, not in America.
It wasn’t that long ago that the new cars had an average warranty rate of 1 incident per vehicle. This also means that there were people who had NO problems, while there were others who had multiple problems.
Yes, there were a multitude of different problems - and it took a fleet of people to fix them all. And it took years and years. And we still haven’t eliminated them.
One of the challenges facing CEO’s of car manufacturers is deciding where to concentrate resources. In the old days, US car manufacturers didn’t realize that quality was an issue. They sold cars based on fresh looks - so changing the styling every year was a high priority. The Japanese car makers realized their biggest problem was quality, so they concentrated on that and eventually surpassed the US car makers.
The game is a lot tougher then it was.
There was a time when cars were changing sheet metal designs every year. The turnover for cars was much quicker. That was the American automotive approach. When Japanese cars came along and started sell ing during the high gas prices and would last a little longer, American manufacturers were more unprepared for the financial then the redesign commitment. Ford made good long lasting tractors and and GM HD trucks. So they are capable. But with most profits comming from service, repair and parts after the sale, money talks more and it has been really tough for American brands to compete with those who valued longevity over change. IMHO, it has little to do with engineering capability…it’s commitment and financial reorganization. Yearly stock reports are more important then slow steady growth through repeat customers. Unfortunately, it still is in many cases.
@dagosa The title of this post is “Engineers in charge again at GM”. It’s OK to have an engineer running the company after years of bean counters and stylists/marketing types. However, engineers really were NEVER in charge of GM!
Ever since William Durant put the company together engineers played an important role, but were never totally in charge. The powerful fincance committee! basically ran the company and made all the strategice decisions. The engineers were told what to do. GM was basically a bank run for the benefit of its shareholders. It also made cars.
In his book “My Years with General Motors”, Alfred P. Sloan came as close as anyone, as an engineer, in actually running GM. He created the frequent model changes and keeping cutomers as they traded yup to more expensive cars.
Ms. Barra is a breath of fresh air, since she is a competent engineer and all the dirty laundry of GM’s past has now been exposed. The company is also very transparent now compared to past years. It will think twice before foisting untested products on consumers and covering up design defects. In the past there was a kneejerk reaction to problems; hire expensive lawyers to say it ain’t so.
“Ms Berra is a breath of fresh air, since she is a competent engineer…”
@Doc , I don’t see it quite that way.
Regardless of technically who is the CEO, whether it be a bean counter or an engineer, it still remains to be seen how answerable they will be to their customers. There is a merchandizing component that prioritizes profits. NO car company builds the " best" products they can reliability wise. An eye is always kept out for profit. The engineer must remain confined within that framework. My comments were with respect to the previous, not solely in response to the original premise of an engineer being in charge.
The primary goal of GM is to make a profit and over engineering does not necessarily lead to that end. For example If Ford builds a car to the reliability standards of a Ford tractor, Ford would go out of business. They would have to charge so much for the car, not because that kind of engineering cost a lot to implement,it doesn’t, but to recover the profits lost to parts, service and repair. My point is…having an engineer in charge means little.
. It’s a merchandizing decision for example to accept superior parts, already engineered to last for the same price by a parts supplier. In my direct experience, Ford chose to accept a lower quality part for the same price as better from subcontractors to maximize their profits in parts and repair. It had nothing to do with superior engineering…it was already there. AND, Ford did not NEED the bailout.
@dagosa Wel said! My point was that the title of the post did not mean much. Lee Iacocca has a Master’s degree in engineering, but his cars, although well focused on customer tastes, were technically not very good.
GM in the past, especially the 70s and 80s missed the mark both on customer appeal and quality. That was the result of the in-breeding we discussed. Honda’s top management team has 4 engineers, and their product development model has ALL disciplines represented equally: Engineering, Marketing, Styling, Accounting, Servicing, Manufacturing. Honda and Toyota, because of this integrated appoach, can give more quality and reliability at a given price than the old sequential stove pipe method of designing and building cars.
Under the old model, Styling set the overall design, then threw it over the fence to Engineering, who did the best they could to put numbers to those sketches, then threw it over the fence to Manufacturing, who had to figure how to get those impossible shapes stamped out. Lastly purchasing was given the task to find suppliers of those items they could not make themselves.
You can see that this method would not result in the best car, let alone the most profitable one.
Service was not even considered, resulting in a lot of cursing by mechanics to reach those hidden components.
As a result, the Toyota/Honda approach gives customers a better car. Ford was the first US company to integrate the product development team with the 1986 Taurus. Unfortunately the focus was only on “Design for Assembly”, reducing the number of assembly hours and cost per car. The Atlanta plant making the Taurus and the Mercury version was the best in the country with only 19 assembly hours per car.
Unfortunately ease of servicing suffered, and quality was not addressed, and was still way below Japanese standards.
US car makers are finally learning to design and build cars the Toyota/Honda/Mazda/Subaru way. What is still missing is “maintainability”, or ease of servicing.
Mary Barra understands all the factors that go into designing and building world class cars, and she says the old GM Model is DEAD. That’s what is so promising. US engineers can design and build world class vehicles when given a chance! And as Toyota has proven, if you get all those factors right you will also be very profitable. Total Quality means just that; quality in everything you do.
One reason Deming was so hated by US manufacturers was that he taught Total Quality which could give customers much better products without increasing cost. The bean counters could never grasp that, or did not want to. Quality is actually free, there’s a book by that name.
@Doc
I think you hit the nail on the head with your comments.
One additional comment about Deming. Japan was a defeated nation and in essence were starting from ground zero management wise. We could structurally make the support system and determine the priorities that went wih it.
America had evolved into a corporate dominated economy that not only values capitalism, but unrestrained capitalism as it related to human regard. When you have a clean slate, you can tell or show industry how to treat their customers and how to make products that satisfied their needs.
In America, you have corporations that were satisfying their needs over that of it’s people. All of Deming’s ideas were not as acceptable but, for defeated nations that recover under American domination, they do quite well ( Mouse that Roared). So much so they made a movie about it. The dominating nation does not do that nor does it have to do, a lot if self reflecting and change for the better of the consumer. We really can’t complain though. IMO, it was the unfettered industrial dominance of corporate wealth at all cost that helped us win the war. Our “exploding” Sherman tanks were as under engineered as our cars…but we made a gazillion of them. They and inferior planes still overwhelmed our enemies with our industrial might by their shear numbers. We won two world wars because of the Monroe Doctrine, IMO with good but not great engineering. Much of the outstanding engineering, we " kidnapped" from our enemies. ;=)
Plus, we supported Japan during their most formidable years economically by taking the burden of self defense off their shoulders. Where would we be today if someone did that for us ?