OT- Japanese Quality Control

This post has to do more with corporate manufacturing philosophy than making saw dust, but it might interest a few readers. In the weekend edition of the WSJ there was an article describing a tour of the Toyota Prius plant near Negoya. The word "jidoka" translates to "Quality must be built in the manufacturing process. Never send a defective item to the next process."

There is a rope which factory workers pull if they notice something abnormal on the line.

How does this attention to QC relate to the recalls of so many Toyota vehicles? How much do these recalls damage the brand ? Is there some glitch in the wireless accelerator system or is there some Japanese bashing being dished out by basically thenon technical lawyer types in Congress?

Reply to
GROVER
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The rope broke?

Reply to
Bob F

GROVER wrote: ...

Yes.

QC of the kind practiced on the production line won't/can't catch either design defects/shortcomings nor will assembly-line anything do anything about firmware problems (altho it's still not clear that is or isn't a problem w/).

Reply to
dpb

Hi, If you pull the rope you got into trouble from supervisor. Americans became Japanese, Japanese became Americans in QC lately.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

The type of quality control mention is very good, but it does not apply to the Toyota problem. If your job is to install widgets in the chassis and the widgets are bent the wrong way, you pull the rope and the problem can be corrected.

The acceleration problem is not evident on the assembly line, the parts looked very good all the way from design to production to installation and served well for a long time. It was well after the fact and after much testing that a problem was found.

As for damaging the brand, it will hit them very hard for a long time. I know a couple of people that won't consider a Toyota now. Maybe in a year or four they will forget and buy one, but sales will be hurt. It is still unclear what the Toyota people knew and how fast they acted. If they did in fact try to hide, it will damage them more than the original problem.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Hi. Indeed most of anything today is more software driven than hardware.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Tie the other end around congress' neck.

Reply to
krw

The gal across the street from me works at the Tundra plant. Last I heard, she installed either an exhaust manifold or power steerng hose. Each worker does at least two tasks (they don't call it a "task"-- they have some strange term for it) and every couple of hours, they take a break, and alternate tasks.I imagine it is to try to make the line less monotonous. Next time I talk to her, I'll ask about the rope, and stopping the line, and her opinions on this mess Toyota is in. Larry

Reply to
Lp1331 1p1331

The description of Toyota's QC system was given to the WSJ reporter by a Toyota employee,therefore it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Ed is right, if the problem turns out to be software related, no one on the assembly line would be aware of it. Then again the corporate culture may have changed over the year, from quality to profit as the prime goal.

Reply to
GROVER

I spent a lot of time working with semiconductor and associated assembly reliability. This was not with the highly integrated units of today. Glitches in the logic can be caused by extraneous noise spikes that can be misinterpreted by the logic as a valid bit. Finding the root cause is likely to be extremely difficult because of the level of intgration and miniaturization.

I hope that Toyota can really pin down and alleviate the current problem. As automotive systems are, by their nature, noisy environments I dread the day when a Toyota with all the "fixes" runs away from the driver.

Critical systems, and an automobile throttle control is a critcal system, should have redundancy and fail-safe in its design.

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie

I heard this same comment today in the media - " redundancy and fail-safe".

Then watching a fishing show they hailed how great an outboard engine was, using 8 Million (?!) operations a second. I was shocked. It could measure/reduce fuel use down to a frog hair..

Reply to
Oren

Not sure how this relates. But I remember hearing someone suggeted this in American factory. Aparently, the "off" handle was on a high catwalk, and to emergency shut down the line, someone had to go up the ladder or stairs, can't remember. Someone suggested a rope, atached to the shut down switch handle. So that in emergency, a worker didn't have to run to the higher level. Just pull the handle via the rope.

The suggestion committee turned down because someone could bump the rope, pushing it up, and unsafely turn the assembly line back on.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Ahhhh..... sooooo......

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I'm with you, on that line of thought. They will likely rename the brand, and the new brand will slide into the US market with little fanfare.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I wonder if they're using Chinese integrated circuits that are picking up satellite transmissions instructing the car's computer to sometimes malfunction? OK, everybody put an aluminum foil hat over your Toyota vehicle's computer, the Chinese are blackmailing Toyota again.

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

I'm thinking that some Toystar employees having fun. "Make car faster! Push blue button!"

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

philosophy than

the weekend

of the

translates to

send a

something

many Toyota

there some

Japanese

lawyer types

Let free enterprize police itself. It's the Republican way. They can do it better than government. ??????????

Reply to
LSMFT

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