GM 1500/Tahoe recall. Not good.

Perrysburg Dodgeboy wrote:
Fordlover it's easy for a small company, but for a large companies it is all about numbers. Yep even you're beloved Ford is run the same way as GM. It's all about the bottom line for them, unlike the smaller companies. Want true quality have your car built by hand. Otherwise you get a mas produced vehicle with there down falls.

Don

Here is my take on how right on you are, but in a world economy point
of view

In the old days here in the USA and more so in Japan/Taiwan/Korea/etc
they purchased from tons of vendors for the exact same component/system/etc

They ALL looked exactly the same: same base part number...except for
a suffix indication which vendor; same looking box; etc. You could and
did not tell them apart except for that suffix. Mixed in stock and
sorted FIFO

The 'leveraged model' from business schools teaching was to also consolidate
everything to lever volume.

Lost was the attention a small company, corporation, etc gave. Ditto
that down the line from the Chairman to CEO to GMs to middle managers
and finally to the production floor. Toss in service

The really big change in the USA was the realization of lost quality
vs foreign (included European) quality. Not saying American workers
could NOT, but saying they were NOT allowed to. Because of the volume
mandated by their bottom line...more on that at the end of this soap box

Just in Time was thought to be the savior of American production, but
they (bean counter management) didn't know that it was the culture
not the pure bottom line numbers. Today it is a ditto with 'lean'

When one of those many, many vendors messed up (they all do some time
or another...I do too) they had volumes of other vendors that would
make up the short fall. That is part of what 'lean' is about, but again
the USA bean counter management doesn't get it.

We 'kill' that vendor and toss them away

Over there in Asia, they put that vendor in a penalty box and let
them back in via trials. All the while the other vendors continue
to ship. Once that one or several suppliers meet their quality requirements,
they are then fully accepted.

With only one or two vendors...the whole production line runs out
of parts. The last Toyota throttle recall is an example of Toyota
adopting American and abandoning their old Japanese ways. Stop ship,
line down and total recall. It was a design flaw, so all would have
also gone down...but...with tons of suppliers, they would have had
production supply start up sooner than via one humongo supplier


Back to the topic of smaller firms feeding humongo OEM's.

If there is an issue (design flaw, production, supplier, etc) in a
BIG OEM, the middle managers will jump in, but they don't know their
product, design, nor production (methods, tooling, etc, etc to workers)

They typically will NOT consult their employee on the line...nor will
the line folks really feel motivated to help, as their solutions that
work, usually get credited to those middle managers

IN a smaller...EVERYONE is involved and their resolutions happen
faster and many times a better solution because they have input from
the worker on the line. This also motivates the person on the line
to keep an eye on everything *AND* willing to call a line down without
fear of unreasonable reprisal(s)