More GM recalls

fla-gypsy wrote:

Perrysburg Dodgeboy wrote:
I agree with you 100% Waynec1957, I posted in the other thread about this. It gets old hearing it's the line workers fault every single time, when Management controls everything. Empowerment of the workforce is nothing more than kool-aid for the consumer. Try it on a real line and you won't have your job long!

Don

At my manufacturing facility workers are required to shut it down if something is not right. I am not in the auto industry but not addressing a problem when it comes up in my facility will get you sent on your way in a hurry. It is always more cost effective in my industry to deal with the problem when it arises rather than waste labor, energy and raw materials on making something that will go in the trash. To claim it is completely management's fault or completely the production workers fault is rarely the case. More often there is a small group of people who knew about the problem but did not exercise their brain and make certain it was addressed. Management that knows about a problem and elects to produce it anyway is inept at best, production workers who throw up their hands and say it is not my problem when an issue arises deserve to be terminated.

I can only talk about GM and the auto industry in general because that's my background, specifically automotive electronics and safety products.

I agree there are times when workers throw their hands up. I've seen it happen many, many times, and it's typically in cases like these when some problem has been swept under the rug. I've also seen a lot of workers disciplined for "making scrap" over the years up to and including being terminated.

But...in this case, I'm going to have to say this lays in the lap of senior engineering and management. This isn't just a few hundred bad parts some hourly quality inspector let slip by on their shift. This was a conscious decision by senior managers and engineers to not address this issue for at least 5 years.