Re: Randy Berger My Answer to You About Nance

Posted by BH On 2010/2/7 11:11:05

All:

When I worked for Chrysler as a District Manager, back in the mid-'80s, I learned what a bunch of crap "zero defects" was. It's not what most consumers thought it was. "Defects" occur only when outcomes do not conform to agreed upon objectives. For example, if an item exhibits 10 failures in 1,000 instances and the objective was to have no more than 10 failures in 1,000 instances, then - Yatta! - there are "zero defects". Sounds more like a great way to hide failures, but outsourcing may be an even greater way to try and shift responsibility.

Unfortunately, Iacocca had made a $1M deal on the back nine of a golf course with a fella named Crosby for a quality improvement program to teach us that nonsense, and that waste of money and my time was just one of many reasons I walked away from what some thought was a promising career. Problem was Chrysler needed to start housecleaning with their quality mindset at the top levels of management and with their product, without all that QIP malarkey - especially for those of us who had no hand or say in design, production, or distribution.

You see, the elephant in the room that everyone admitted to, but nobody seemed to address, was the fact that whenever the rate of production quickly rose to meet rapidly growing demand, quality suffered. Chrysler was not alone on that regard back then, but it looks like Toyota finally fell into that pothole. Now, I'm not saying dealers are beyond reproach, but modern CSI surveys and the like merely use the dealer as a whipping boy for the sins of the corporation.

Yet, when I returned to the mainstream car biz, with GM, back in 2003, I was appalled at the number of late-model vehicles that came into the shop "on the hook" - a lot worse than when I worked in a GM store back in the early '80s.

In the meantime, while friends with late-model Hondas and Toyotas only had to take their cars in for oil changes, my POS '98 Monte Carlo, which I purchased brand-new, had repeated brake problems that went unresolved until I fixed 'em myself with aftermarket parts, and the intake had been resealed due to oil/coolant leaks THREE times in less than 40K. Admittedly, the third reseal was because a pushrod fell out after the second time - perhaps dealer incompetence. Still, I should have put one of those old "I'd Rather Be Driving a Packard" bumper stickers on it!

The only reason I keep driving that car, to this day, is because it's cheaper to keep fixing it than making a car payment for anything newer. I've actually saved a lot of money that way.

Meanwhile, I see where the Chevy Cobalt is being investigated for a electric power steering issue - where some cars have even changed lanes by themselves. Even before that, my insurance agent had warned they were raising rates on those cars due to their less then satisfactory risk experience with them.

As alluded to in another thread, all this fly-by-wire technology for motor vehicles is just plain nuts. I hope to never own one so-equipped - no matter who makes it.