No luck truck
I think since we only hear about the bad things that happen, which are the exceptions rather than the rules, we tend to over react.
Can things get better? Of course. But, to intimate that the vehicles being produced today are inferior, because we only read about the bad ones, is a little over the top.
I worked in the auto industry for over 16 years. I've seen first hand how they do things. some of which, I'm not supposed to talk about.
The american auto industry built and sold crappy quality for many years. None of them did a thing about it until the Japanese came in here and started to threaten their market by doing it better. We were at their mercy,and they took advantage of it.
We (Americans) invented Statistical Process Control, but didn't implement it. The Japanese did, and started kicking our ***. Now they own the top spots for sales and quality by using one of our techniques that we invented, but did not use.
Hands down, the American engineers can out design the Japanese engineers. The Japanese are more disciplined in manufacturing.
I was also recruited to be a part of a quality drive. We were placed in the assembly plants to be the go betweens between manufacturing and the design group. We had a team of 17 - 20 engineers to cover every aspect of the vehicle. Our goal was to resolve long term manufacturing issues that the manufacturing and design engineers were too busy to address.
We pulled our warranty numbers every week when they were updated and picked our top offenders, and went after them. We then went out and took measurements and quantified the problem. Then made some changes to the process or parts and ran small controlled batch runs to test if our theories were correct. Then upon successful trial run, we wrote the change notices to change the parts and/or process and included the design engineers in our notice. After the new change came into production, we tracked the warranty data and had to give reports on our progress every other week in a weekly top management meeting. They grilled us. Many times we were made very uncomfortable in those meetings if we weren't making the progress that they wanted. We were under the gun with the plant manager and his team, and the executive managers from the "main office" would also come in for a visit. Sometimes our plant manager got chewed out for lack of progress in those meetings.
Once we did successfully implement the changes and help the assembly plant with their problems, they started to accept us more and were more cooperative. We would then pick the next top hitter on our quality list and go after that. We brought our J.D. Powers numbers down from 138 to 89 on a model that was being phased out. We also supported the launch of the new model, going to the design center during the test builds and watching how they fit together and learning from the design engineers how the new designs and processes were going to work. We then followed the first ones down the lines and showed the operators the new changes. We had our new model warranty numbers at the same level that we built out the old model within three months of launch. A very hard goal to obtain.
After that assignment, I transferred to the engine plant, as I love engines. I was in the same quality position that I was before. After about two years they "merged" us in with the plant engineers, and we just became free engineers to the plant and our main focus was running the plant day to day, instead of concentrating on quality.
A few years later, times were getting tough, and they started to make cuts. I saw the Quality Manager bend and fold to the pressures from his superiors instead of fight for quality. There was a group of quality engineers at the plant who were responsible to approve all gauges and perform capability studies on each station/gauge. We worked with them to check and verify our processes. He had about 8 - 10 day shift engineers, and 2 night shift engineers. He skipped a few meetings and they cut him to only 1 engineer on each shift for that department. Not nearly enough to perform the work that needed to be done.
I also saw him bend and fold to pressure to ship known bad engines when we were getting tight with the assembly plants. We would have about 3000 - 5000 engines on hold because we suspected that there were maybe about 150 - 300 engines with "suspect parts" on them. Instead of finishing the sort to find the bad ones, he would release them and say, "I'll take my hits in warranty, instead to have to inspect some known good engines to find a few bad ones...." That used to dig at me. I would sometimes voice my opinion of that, and was seen as a trouble maker sometimes. However, when I solved their $750,000 per year piston pinning scrap problem, and other high hitting problems, they liked me....
I fought for the customer. I put myself in their shoes and wanted to put out the best quality that we could. I used to explain to them, if you build a good quality vehicle that lasts over 100,000 miles where your customer only has to take it back to the dealer for regular maintenance, then you will build a loyal customer base that will keep coming back and buying more of our cars. If you sell them problem cars, then they will go to our competition, take their friends and family with them and pass along the horror stories. You will then have a hard time getting that customer back. I wanted to keep the loyal customers coming back, like my father who bought that companies' products since '62. I wanted to make him proud and keep loyal customers like him.
They could build better quality if they wanted. When the times get tough, they start letting the quality people go as they aren't seen as "productive" to build the product. They just look at the current sales and profit numbers and try to "satisfy the shareholders" to drive their business decisions. Unfortunately doing that can compromise quality and alienate the customers to hurt future business.... That is a big reason that you get some of these poor quality vehicles... Business as usual....
I do agree that the economy depends on the automotive market. It goes down many levels from the OEM, the suppliers, and their suppliers, etc. If the automotive companies go under, our economy will go with it.
I've worked first hand with the operators. Most of them also want to build the best product that they can. They are trained/encouraged to alert management if they see something different as they assemble the parts. When they do question it, and it is a problem, but management decides to run with it instead of fix it, it sends the wrong message to the operators like they don't care. Then the operators say, "why should I care if they don't?" If you let the operators do their jobs like they are supposed to, and not let management get in the way, you would get better quality than what the managers are producing today. It's how they manage that is the problem more than the operators. Sure there are a few bad apples, but most of the operators know that they have to do a good job and that their future depends on it.
