Not just good engineering, Quality Control. This is something
American car makers didn't learn until well into the '90s.
I think it was on here somebody told a good anecdote where an
American car maker paired up with an Asian one and learned about
strict quality control...
-Curt
That is the frod madza transmission story.
"Two well-publicized examples in practice have given credence to this
theory. In one case, Ford and Mazda were producing identical
transmission components in the United States and Japan using the same
blueprints, equip- ment, and processes. The Ford assemblies were
experiencing a higher rate of field failures. Upon examining the
critical dimensions produced by the Ford plant, all were found to be
within acceptable tolerances. However, upon exam- ining the
Mazda-built components, nearly all were precisely on target with
almost no variation within the allowable tolerance. The explanation
is that in mechanical assemblies, excessive variation from design
targets causes prema- ture wear, eventually resulting in early field
failure.
A second example was published in the Japanese newspaper Ashai com-
paring the warranty cost differences of Sony televisions at a
Japanese and San Diego plant. A critical product characteristic is
color density. For this charac- teristic, all units produced at the
San Diego plant were within the design toler-ance, while a small
proportion of those shipped from the Japanese plant were not.
However, the average loss per unit from the San Diego plant was $.89
larger than that of the Japanese plant. It was discovered that units
out of speci- fication were adjusted at the San Diego plant (adding
more cost to the pro- cess), but rarely to the target value. In the
Japanese plant, the color density of the vast majority of units were
produced close to the target value (see Exhibit 1-3). The further the
color density was from the target value, the more likely customers
will complain and require an adjustment (adding to warranty costs).
From Exhibit 1-3 it is clear that the U.S.-made units required
significantly more warranty adjustments than the Japanese-made
counterparts. The chair- man of Sony explained the difference this
way (Sullivan, 1984):
When we tell one of our Japanese employees that the measurement of a
certain part must be within a tolerance of plus or minus five, for
example, he will auto- matically strive to get that part as close to
zero tolerance as possible. When we started our plant in the United
States, we found that workers would follow in- structions perfectly.
But if we said make it between plus or minus five, they would get it
somewhere near plus or minus five all right, but rarely as close to
zero as the Japanese workers did.
The reduction of variation is the cornerstone of the Deming
philosophy. As variation decreases, so will costs, resulting in
higher levels of profit and con- sumer satisfaction."
First source I stumbled over:
http://www.flexstudy.com/catalog/schpdf.cfm?coursenum=9529a
Bottom half of page 10.
Basic quality 101 stuff. Unfortunately more people know the names
of 20 (c)rappers than know quality 101.
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