i wished i watched…going to try to find a link to it after exams.
but yeah i heard about the private jet thing…guess they will still never learn…but our economy’s still pretty dependent on them regardless of our toyota and honda plants so even though i’d like to see them bite the dust, it’d screw us over pretty badly.
almost all of the tier 1 and 2 suppliers up here (magna for instance) have the big 3 as their main customers so you can imagine the impact of the big 3 disappearing… i really doubt they’ll disappear though…just doesn’t make economical sense really so we really have no choice but to lend our tax dollars to them. i guess it’s just a matter of settling on some agreement.
another interesting story which i believe led to the big 3’s downfall revolves around statistical process control, SPC. it was studied by some guy named Deming during WW2 era and i remember an engineer telling me awhile ago that just after WW2, Deming tried to pitch this idea of SPC to the big 3 but of course, they were too cocky at the time to consider it.
iirc, Deming then pitched the idea internationally for the automotive sector and the japanese saw the potential in SPC and jumped all over it. Deming then familiarized the japanese with the concept and ever since then it’s skyrocketted japanese quality and gotten them to where they are now. the big 3 realized how big of a mistake they made ignoring their own countryman and tried to adapt this as of the last couple of decades but of course, it’s very hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
most of the big 3’s quality relies on what is known as “the goal post” approach (1 post being an upper limit, the other the lower). so when a certain part is manufactured, critical dimensions are measured every so often at set intervals and tracked to see if they lie between the posts. this is a very lazy approach because all you really know is whether or not the part YOU’VE ALREADY MADE (ie. invested money into) is good or bad. you cannot predict the future trend of your production.
with spc, the goal posts are still there, but when measurements are stored and analyzed over time, a bell curve forms and by studying this bell curve you now know where the center of the bell curve lies and how wide your curve is. so you can effectively install countermeasures ahead of time to reduce the width of the curve (minimize variation) or offset the centerline (so that most of your parts are meeting the target spec).
in summary, the american’s were used to relying on a reactive approach for production whereas the japanese always try to be proactive, which saves the company a shitload of money in the end. you can see how after several decades of being reactive, the big 3 really struggled to adapt to a more proactive approach.
^^anyone please correct me if i’m wrong, but this is what i’ve been told before and it seems to make sense with the quality i’ve seen out of american cars vs. the consistency in japanese, for a vehicle in the same class.
case in point:
i think it was last year i went to the canadian auto show with this girl that knew nothing about cars. she brought up the quality question and since i didn’t really feel like explaining the above to her…
i told her to fiddle around with the heating vents when we sat in a TL. EVERY vent felt the same in terms of rotation smoothness, the finish quality, etc.
when we went to the skydome, we took a break in a Deville, and i then told her to do the same thing again with the vents inside. low and behold…there was 1 vent that was so seized into its place i actually had to use both of my hands to break it loose out of its place to allow it to rotate/pivot.
now if the variation in quality is that bad for the interior, imagine what’s going on under their hoods!! yikes! (i know, they’re probably a lot more tighter on control for the drivetrain…but still you never know…i’ve heard enough horror stories about them).
