GM 1500/Tahoe recall. Not good.

Perrysburg Dodgeboy wrote:

waynec1957 wrote:
As I posted in another thread, I retired from GM after 30 years in production. One of the big things I saw over the years was a gradual taking away of workers’ decision making capability, particularly in the areas of quality. There was always some “program of the day” that, for all intents and purposes, was meant to give workers the ability to report quality concerns.

In my experience, for the most part, these were nothing more than window dressing when it came to solving real problems. Likewise there were always a small percentage of workers willing to use these programs to get a little extra seat time. The most effective program I saw during my time there was a joint GM/UAW program where the immediate people responsible could be bypassed. In any case, I’ve seen a lot of product go out the door that a bunch of people knew had problems.
Empowerment of the work force is just a catch phrase nothing more. I will say in a parts plant it is a little different than an assembly plant.

AND, I can promise that every day in every GM assembly plant in the US someone is getting time off for refusing (legitimately) to run bad product. Any worker who intentionally shuts down an assembly line at a General Motors facility, for ANY reason, will be shown the door, regardless how much protection anyone thinks they might have.
It's amazing the number of people that refuse to believe this!

As far as the calibration issue, I’ve seen (more times than I can count) product or processes run out of specifications and some manager or tech change the calibration tools to fit the tolerances. There were some mighty sharp pencils floating around in those days.
I have been told to "open" the tolerance so a gage will buy marginal parts. Funny thing when you tell them to put it in writing and you want a copy of it they never do it! I have been threatened to be walked out for refusing to do just that. I have yet to have been walked to the gate.

That said, I’ve owned 7 GMC or Chevy trucks since 1979 (including the one I have now) and never had a serious problem with any of them. So for whatever reason, most of the time the manufacturing process worked. I did however have a 1994 1500 Dodge Ram that the transmission went south after less than 10,000 miles.
When the R700 went on line GM knew the front cover pump would leak internally but ran them anyway. It took Toledo Powertrain all most a year to fix the issue. But they still built those transmissions, why because back then the warranty was only 12/12 and they knew that would not fail under warranty and their customer would eat the cost of the repair.

Something no one as mentioned that needs consideration is where these vehicles were manufactured. I can’t find anywhere which specific models are affected by this particular recall (I’m working on it), but I know for certain the 2014 Silverado and Sierra Crew Cabs were assembled in Silao Mexico. This plant has been open since the mid-90s and also produces some 5.3L and 6.0l engines. Anyone who thinks those workers have a voice in the production process or a “union mouth piece” needs to go tour one of those plants.
The Chrysler Mexican plants are Unionized for what it's worth.

As far as the other recalls, from what I’m told the affected vehicles were made at several different plants, so that tells me it’s a process problem.

Man I'm glad I don't work it Auto production. The plant I work in (downhole oil tools) we all work together to make a quality product. That includes QA, Production, Engineering, planning, buyers, etc. We do have problems, but we try to solve them and stay customer focused.