Quality Control - Domestic vs Japan

[buster]

The build quality of the ZR2 (2022) is OK. It feels solid and well put together, but the panel gaps are way off. Also a lot of interior squeaks/rattles here and there that seem temperature dependent. I suspect it's relatively common for a body on frame truck with a high level of interior plastics. Also a covid built truck. Overall no complaints.

 

[Hall]

customers may notice thin paint

That is an odd one and this isn't a worker issue. Do people paint vehicles in assembly plants anymore ? I thought it was all automated and done by robots now.

It's "emergency department " Nobody.calls it the OR any longer

I've only heard it referred to as "ED" in the UK. Here, it's always been "ER". Checked a couple nearby hospitals and they call theirs "emergency room" or "emergency centers".

 

[Ws6]

That is an odd one and this isn't a worker issue. Do people paint vehicles in assembly plants anymore ? I thought it was all automated and done by robots now.

I've only heard it referred to as "ED" in the UK. Here, it's always been "ER". Checked a couple nearby hospitals and they call theirs "emergency room" or "emergency centers".

ED, ER, same same. Depends on the company. Sometimes they see patients, sometimes clients, but it's all just a euphemism.

 

[Zee09]

Japan is living off a past reputation
No better than the rest... Toyota is proving that daily...

 

[Pablo]

Never seen ED or OR used for ER but I might carefully ask my wife as she used work in the industry

 

[Zee09]

This is disgusting
If i put out a memo like that to my customers they would tell me that is my problem because its my product and i need to fix it. Excuses with over MSRP pricing and a bad attitude that goes along with it is totally unacceptable and the premise we are all gullible and will accept bad quality because our country can only be so good...

Sounds more like second quality dumping to me and a poorly trained workforce... what an embarrassment.

 

[Pablo]

This is disgusting
If i put out a memo like that to my customers they would tell me that is my problem because its my product and i need to fix it. Excuses with over MSRP pricing and a bad attitude that goes along with it is totally unacceptable and the premise we are all gullible and will accept bad quality because our country can only be so good...

Sounds more like second quality dumping to me and a poorly trained workforce... what an embarrassment.
View attachment 344713

This guy gets it.

Not sure who he is but he really nailed it

 

[nthach]

service type jobs, retail, food, transportation, clerks, interactions are totally different.

They want to be there doing what they are doing, and they want you to enjoy whatever it is they are doing for you.

People in the service business here often feel trapped in low wage and their attitudes and feeling are noticeable.
They dont like their jobs, and dont want to be doing what they are doing and you can feel it.

This is where I feel AI and automation/robots can make the most impact, instead of laying off desk jockeys and middle management. Let’s face it, minimum wage will be going up - which is a good and bad thing. Most retail/food service/customer service jobs must live and die by the daily schedule spat out from their ERP/timeclock(like UKG’s Kronos)/POS(Oracle Micros for example) to align with budgeted labor. CSI scores are important, too. Waymo with self-driving cars and Uber jumping on that bandwagon(they won’t fully go full-on self driving, cheaper to pay humans slave wages than to invest millions in self-driving cars since Waymo has Alphabet’s backing) - but Uber has yet to prove profitable. Fast food can definitely be automated. Minimum wage retail/customer service/food service jobs aren’t the domain of teenagers anymore.

It's a cultural thing. Most Americans wouldn't tolerate Japanese management or work culture. It has its tradeoffs. One youtuber who is American moved to Japan to teach. She found higher pay and better overall schedule. She gave the first company two weeks notice. They told her she dishonored and shamed the company and its employees.

The Japanese value respect via subordination and order but they also value egalitarianism at their factories. No unions(at least in the US, Toyota workers have a union in Japan), management and their subordinates work together. If work is slow, you’re not sitting in the cafeteria or the “job bank”, you’re doing other things like cleaning up, minor repairs or sent on a task. That goes against American exceptionalism. Meanwhile at a UAW plant, there’s always a rift between the rank and file, the smallest thing can erupt into a strike but management wants to eke out every last dollar of “productivity”, which is why American car/quality hasn’t improved(maybe except the last 20 years). But, while the otakus glaze over Japanese culture, there is a dark side to it - overwork and stress. In Japan, unless you run your own business, a fresh college grad is expected to give it all to their company, wine and dine with their bosses, and consider work to be “family”. The sariman culture. Toyota was in the Japanese press a while ago when the lead engineer of the Prius committed suicide. Which is pretty common - they make our 9-5 desk jockey culture look tame.

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

Yes Agree , but Forums have gotten Smarter & Collective of We the People starting to Catch on to all Bull ..

There are at Least 2 Class Action Suites - I Know Of . .

Several Times Over Year - some Direct Questions come out of No where from Folks that only been on few Forums for 1 week
Those Mostly New Lawyers Looking for Info on Cases or Their Paralegals searching - now - may find what They need with AI . .

Looking at Ford , GM , Chevy , Volvo , Audi , VW - all - Had Very Troubled Times - some of Which brought on Much Higher Cost
Cut Backs Hurt in many Area's . .

Then Manufacturing - just thought We Dump ~ Inspectors & Inspection sections & let Rejects Fall where they may - If Our Tails get in
Binder We'll Just have do ~ Recall & Blame it on Vendor ~

The birth of the extended warranty!

 

[buster]

Yeah I regret not getting an extended warranty.

 

[dfarr67]

We've Gone through 2 American Made Refrigerators with Worst Design Faults & Issues to Point of Loosing
$285 Bucks worth of Food .. from one that Died while away for 7 days with ice maker turned off ..

P Poor Insulation to P Poor Ice Makers & Parts -1 Unit Ice Maker in Back Wall Sweated so Much entire Back Refrigerator Rusted Out
4 Yrs Old - Built like Crap ..

I Guess We had spent $2K instead of $1700 - might have gotten Better Unit = Maybe this was 2016 so On 3rd Refrigerator since 2022
Broke Out Cash $3K for Much Better Bosch .. Prior to all this Non-sense Unit Last 20yrs - We Left with Sold Home ..
During those 20yrs we just didn't realized how Bad Quality had gotten ..


Yes They are Today - Bottom Computer Line $ to Penny On Bottom_Line . & Poor Trained Inspectors .

Mostly ~ Plus many Manufactures Stream-Lining Inspection with ISO 9000, 10,000 , 14000
They all Through Math & machines are so Good Owners & Manufactures could just Lay Off 100's of Good Inspectors
Using Statistical Prediction & Math

( W R O N G )

Even with research and more money in hand- sometimes the quality of yesteryear is simply not available. Not impressed with my Whirlpool apliances.

 

[nthach]

Even with research and more money in hand- sometimes the quality of yesteryear is simply not available. Not impressed with my Whirlpool apliances.

My neighbors had the compressor on their American made Maytag hit the deck in less than a year. It was the legacy Whirlpool SxS that hasn’t really changed much since the 1990s but with more electronic controls and R-290 refrigerant in R-134a architecture.

My parent’s Chinese-made Whirlpool French door OTOH is working just fine. It’s a Hisense underneath.

 

[Hall]

GE Appliance is owned by the Haier corporation which of course is Chinese

Many years ago, we bought an appliance at Home Depot (washer or dryer, can't recall) and it was brand "X" (Maytag or Whirlpool or whatever), but the box said "HAIER" in big, bold lettering on it. They didn't even try to pretend it was the well-known name brand everyone knows.

 

[nthach]

Many years ago, we bought an appliance at Home Depot (washer or dryer, can't recall) and it was brand "X" (Maytag or Whirlpool or whatever), but the box said "HAIER" in big, bold lettering on it. They didn't even try to pretend it was the well-known name brand everyone knows.

GE Appliances(including Profile and Monogram) is Haier. Whirlpool has a JV in China with Hisense and a little bit of Panasonic(Sanyo) involvement. Whirlpool also has an agreement with Samsung for OEM microwave supply(and some Maytag Neptunes were really Samsung in drag). Electrolux has a Thai plant making refrigerators. Your microwave is likely made by Samsung, LG, Hisense, Midea or Haier - check the FCC ID.

The high-end isn’t immune to Chinese or Korean ownership. Haier owns Fisher & Paykel. Samsung owns Dacor(appliances, not scuba gear of the same name). Bosch owns Thermador and Gaggeneau.

 

[PandaBear]

This rubs me the wrong way. Boy Toyota has taken a step backwards. When I sold cars at a Lexus dealership back in 2016 we had the occasional customer that had to have a Japanese manufacturered RX350. I put two identical RX350s side by side, one made in Ontario one in Japan. The paint, fit and finish, etc were identical. Toyota even uses the same manufacturing equipment in both locations as to not have and differences. Have directors and management become this bad?

I can only mention about non-auto products my previous company sell.

Some customers are very picky and have some problems that others won't notice. For example their system has a poorly designed chassis that would hum if you have a resonance at a certain frequency. We either bin the output differently so they would have "better" quality stuff, or we re-design so they all pass the worst case scenario in the long run.

So, in the long run I hope exporting to Japan means their picky customers would improve our overall quality for everyone here as well. However I am not holding my breath and I know the cheaper solution is to give one of the Japanese QC / QA guy an H1B so he can just sort the output in the US. You can't keep him here for too long otherwise he would be influenced by the local plants' employee and not holding the same standard from where he was trained. As soon as he becomes sloppy he has to be replaced with a fresh one.

 

[PandaBear]

All Manufactures have Issues , but when 2 Manufactures get together to Developed 10 speed & Both Have Issues ?

I have to ask Myself what ( H ) is Going on in America . . Volvo has Had Their Issues , VW all of them ..

My Old Ford - AOD that Folks were Blowing Up - I just had Sheriff Shift Kit - installed - Copy Cat
Factory with Better OD Drum .. V8 Thunderbird - Pumped Up 100 hp Ran & Shifted Nice . .

CHEVY - so - Technically Not - but GM - Recalled ?

We drove the most miles per year probably in the entire world, have the widest spread in temperature range from Arctic Circle to Death Valley, and people who would mod and neglect and sue the manufacturers.

You can build in a lot of safety margin like Toyota and GM, or you can blame your customers like the Germans. Ford historically have a worse transmission reliability than GM so that's probably because they didn't build in enough safety margin or their people aren't as experienced / funded for the same amount of work done.