As everyone here knows (Maybe), the Fiero was the First American car built under the Deming TQM system- that is "Total Quality Management" which is what an AMERICAN taught the Japanese back in the 50s and 60s (Look up Edward Deming)...They even have an award in Japan called the Deming Prize.....
Over on Hemings they had an article about the Ford Pinto- of course the whole "Fire-bomb" thing came up, with one sad little man claiming he rode in a friend's Pinto fearing for his life during the whole ride......Yet the truth about the Pinto (And the Fiero also) is that they both have a Better than Average Fire Safety record......
So, putting these two situations together, here is what I posted over on Hemings;
"The Pinto- Like the Fiero- was known as a “fire bomb”…Amazingly, both the Pinto and Fiero have BETTER than Average fire-safety records! That is the truth- not what news writers cooked up as “Facts”
As for Japanese cars being better- First, an American named Deming taught the Japanese Quality control, and Second, the highest quality car in 1979 was the Honda Accord; Popular Mechanics did an owner survey and 49% of the respondents stated “No Problems”….meaning that OVER 50% had problems! In 1991 Pop-Mech surveys showed the Chevy Caprice to be the WORST car they surveyed….66% of respondents stated “No problems” That means the WORST car in the 90s was BETTER than the BEST car in the 70s! Today all cars manufactured world-wide use some form of Deming’s Quality control system."
I have a whole list of "Common Knowledge" ....."facts" ......that are completely false......
Originally posted by cvxjet: As everyone here knows (Maybe), the Fiero was the First American car built under the Deming TQM system- that is "Total Quality Management" which is what an AMERICAN taught the Japanese back in the 50s and 60s (Look up Edward Deming)...They even have an award in Japan called the Deming Prize.....
Deming went to Japan because his message was rejected in America, and part of the reason for the decline of Motor City and the Big Three. So sad that they wouldn't listen.
So true......Arrogance and hubris.......And that is the defining thing as far as quality goes; America had horrid quality during the late 70s and 80s...Japan was very good. But in 2006 Toyota stated "We are going to be the BIGGEST!!! That is our plan...." and 2 years later they had a bunch of quality problems. Then VW did the exact same thing...."We are going to be the BIGGEST manufacturer (Of crap)"
Look at Daimler Benz and what they did with Chryco.......Fired all of the good stylists and put in their.....fools.....and then they brought out the Caliber, the 2nd Gen Durango, the 3rd gen Dakota, and the 2011-2014 Chrysler 200........Then took a BATH selling the wreckage and Fiat took over. Fiat then did the new Durango, 200 and Dart- all three were styling home runs- even if they weren't the best cars......
On average, Mercedes has the worst quality- it's not that low, but year after year they have a lot of problems and (Obviously) have NO interest in fixing those problems; "We are GERMAN engineered- we are the best- Do not argue with us....Go away!"
The Fiero is actually a very good example of how BAD GM quality control was... They couldn't control anything with sheet metal and fabrication and could not assemble any car with enough precision for good panel gaps... so they assembled the fiero like normal, then built a huge machine to drill and mill all the panel attachment points at once with a single setup to bypass all the quality issues they couldn't control in fabrication.
If you want to see how bad it was, look at the thickness of the mill/drill pads and where the mounting holes are positioned from pad to pad. I have seen some chassis that were so far out the the hole was drilled OUTSIDE off the mill/drill pad.
I love the Fiero, but precision fabricated it was not.
I see the mill and drill as a great thing... my opinion is that depending on tolerance stackups of multiple parts is not the best thing.
Chassis that were drilled outside the pad should have been rejected though. But pressure to keep producing is strong... suit+tie people in charge don't worry about these details that floor employees may take issue with.
Company culture comes the suit+ties up top and pushes downwards.
My perspective on quality from the R&D side of things is that adherence to a quality standard such as IATF 16949 results in quality control wanting good metrics (such as the process capability metric Cpk).
Then, in order for quality to easily hit their targets, R&D has to widen the tolerances on the drawing to keep everyone happy. Since the goalposts have widened, the Cpk improves for a given process variation. So quality is no better, but the metrics are good...
I was trained in TQM back around 1990 at NAS Alameda. For 8-9 years (1982-1990) I hated the job- It was so bad I would go in a bathroom stall every day and just shake- The bosses yelling at us, never listening, making incredibly bad decisions; We had some landing gear struts damaged during stripping/cleaning, so they were sent to another facility to be re-chromed. We dropped behind, so the managers decided to have us doing 10-hour days, 6 days a week; We had really nothing to do because we were waiting for the landing gears to come back- but management would not listen to dumb workers!
After TQM was implemented, we would have a discussion with our boss after lunch every thursday; We were the boss's eyes and ears on the line after that- I have to give the bosses credit- it was a bitter pill to swallow yet I don't think any of them were ever fired. We started putting out Zero-Defect aircraft...In fact that was all we put out after TQM.
To give you an idea how impressive that was; No aircraft line, either new production or re-work, ever produced a zero-defect aircraft in the history of aviation- we were the first!
They show in movies and such how the new processes have all kinds of buzz-words and such...We never had any of that. It was mainly communication. I went over to Final shop, where the planes were "Checked-out" before proceeding to flight test and talked to the head electrician- (Final shop used to have a list (3 legal sheets long!) that they would give to the general foreman in front of the Superintendent...and our boss would ask to see it; "If you do it by the book it will be right! Just do it by the book!") I asked Herb to just let me know when he found an electrical problem- I would track down who did the job, and that tech or I would correct it and make note of HOW we made the mistake.
That worked so well, and they knew they could trust me- I wanted to get things done right, not get anyone in trouble- so after a while the MECHS started coming to me also......Noone ever referred to the other guys as "Tweaks" or "Smechs" after TQM. Teamwork....
After TQM, I would actually go to bed every Sunday night thinking "Can't wait to get to work and start building that harness" (Or whatever)
In 1993, I was enjoying the job, was up for a promotion and had bought a house- so they decided to close the base...(It's not paranoia if the world actually IS out to get you!)
[This message has been edited by cvxjet (edited 01-16-2020).]
Quality has to be taken into context. The era of the vehicle. The area of the car etc All play into this.
Things like panel gaps have to be understood. On the Fiero it had to have large gaps as the plastic expanded on the sun. The Corvette suffered similar issues. My Black Fiero pops and cracks on a hot day expanding.
Now on the metal cars GM cars were made to spec. They just never asked for better panel gaps.
Bob Lutz in his book Car Guys vs Bean. Counters tells how he showed the engineer incharge of sheet metal stamping the panel gaps on. Hyundai. Bob asked the engineer why GM gaps were not as tight, the Engineer said because they were never asked to make it better. He explained he could easily make them tighter but was not permitted to do so unless he was told to do it. He could not ask to do it.
For a few hundred thousand dollars and a few wheel he showed what they could do for the 08 Malibu. Bob said fix it and don’t ask just fix what ever needed to be better. Since then the gaps are industry tight.
Poor management and corporate structure can not be corrected just by better quality control. That was more of GM’s issue than anything. GM hurt itself more by poor management than any other thing.
GM actually had some great engineering done but it often was under funded or not employed.
FYI the mill and drill was to keep cost down and was a very innovative idea. It was done to a good tolerance for plastic panels but compared to steel it was sloppy.
As panel gaps got tighter the plastic panels began disappearing from the GM line up. Even at Saturn they started to move away at the end.
[This message has been edited by hyperv6 (edited 01-17-2020).]
Very true- Sadly, GM devolved into only putting money-guys in charge rather than car guys (Like Lutz).....Whatever you build, you should have an enthusiast in the management team or you are going to build crap.
Some of the innovations that GM engineering came up with are simply amazing; A) Plastic leaf springs (Last 50 times as long as steel leaf springs and weigh 75% less), B) First usable automatic transmission, C) PR 2 valve V8 that gets better MPG and performance than 4 valvers, D) Magnetorheological shock absorbers......The list is basically endless.
But GM management was arrogant; "The stupid car buyers will buy whatever we give them!" which later descended into "We will De-content the cars and sell them cheaper- that is why they like the japanese cars!" (No mention of quality or value)
Twice GM crushed an innovative way of building cars; First the Fiero, and then later, They ruined Saturn and finally were able to kill that division completely. For the first 5 years or so, Saturn rated higher than Lexus as far as Customer/sales/service relations.....later, they were forced to act just like any other GM division.
GM actually showed some real intelligence when they created the C5 Corvette; Before, they would only ask Vette owners "What should we fix or change?" and the Vette owners would reply "Don't change a thing!!!" When they started working on the C5, they asked people who would NOT buy a Vette, "What don't you like?" 911, Supra, 3000 GT VR4, etc owners. So they fixed a bunch or ridiculous things about the C4 Vette; The entry/exit, the forward Visibility (You can see the road 20 FEET closer than the C4!), trunk space....
If you get a chance, read the book, "All Corvettes are Red".........
[This message has been edited by cvxjet (edited 01-18-2020).]
Back in the day I was hired to bring a mid-size electronics manufacturer up to speed on TQM and ISO900.
It was privately owned company in which all of the department managers were promoted from within. While this has some advantages, one of the big disadvantages is that the leaders had a lot of vertical knowledge but very little horizontal knowledge, meaning they knew a lot about their departments but almost nothing about other departments and literally nothing about the latest manufacturing practices.
I came in knowing almost nothing about their manufacturing practices so there was a lot of blood spilled trying to get them to adopt even a modicum of new ideas.
In fact, the plant manager fired me one Friday out of the blue, basically for not being a "team player". Since I had nothing to lose I went to the VP of manufacturing.
I started the conversation by telling him that since I no longer worked for the company I could speak freely and laid out all the problems and how much it was costing the company in rejects from customers. $$$$$'s always gets their attention.
Upshot was, Monday morning I was back at work with a promotion to Director of Quality and about 2 months later the Plant Manager was sidelined into Special Projects. Took him 3-4 years to even look at me after that and he spent a lot of time behind the scenes basically sabotaging what I was doing.
It also took about 7 years to get all the managers on board with the new approach which seems a pretty excessive amount of time, looking back on it now, but these guys had a lot of misplaced pride and a lot of loyalty to the ex-Plant Manger. It took a lot of diplomacy to get things changed but we did it.
I guess I'm saying that the human factor is often overlooked when discussing the facts and figures.
If you are in Quality Control/ Quality Assurance it helps to have a degree in Psychology.................or a concealed carry permit.
The key to running a company is very easy but accomplishing is the difficult part.
Often companies are like car clubs and too many hands get involved. .
Companies need to find a good balance of doing the right things and letting the engineers and designers to do much of what they want. But companies need to fiscally responsible people to protect the Engineers and designers from themselves too. This was a point Lutz made in one of his books.
Finding that balance and keeping it is a chase that is rewarding but difficult. Getting the right mix of personalities that can mix and work together is where it is tough.
Then many of the management side may be good at management but may not understand the product.
If all this was easy every car company would not be struggling.
[This message has been edited by hyperv6 (edited 01-19-2020).]
