Toyota vs Ford. A modern parable

http://seekingalpha.com/article/111186-toyota-vs-ford-a-modern-manufacturing-parable?source=yahoo

Re(re)Post(post)!

LOL(funny E36 M3)

People make the japanese out to be technological wizards but their cars have had problems too like having their engines get gunked up and starving the top end for oil. I remember going to the NUMI plant in Fremont where they build toyotas and the japanese had 7 slogans about continual improvement and other GMPs. The only reason the japanese build the quality of cars today that they do is an american taught them about quility control in the 70s all the while the american companies forgot about it.

LOL all true...notice also that the article doesn't make the Japanese out to be technological wizards, just common-sense managers.

I had a design for manufacture class several years ago. One of the important lessons was the correlation between reliability and part count. To illustrate this, the instructor cited a plant that GM intended to close due to poor performance. Toyota entered a joint venture with GM to build the Corolla at the plant. The plant became one of the highest quality plants in North America. Same plant, same workers, different product. The GM product had a much higher part count. There were other factors as well, but part count weighed heavily in the resulting quality improvement.

PeteWW wrote: I had a design for manufacture class several years ago. One of the important lessons was the correlation between reliability and part count. To illustrate this, the instructor cited a plant that GM intended to close due to poor performance. Toyota entered a joint venture with GM to build the Corolla at the plant. The plant became one of the highest quality plants in North America. Same plant, same workers, different product. The GM product had a much higher part count. There were other factors as well, but part count weighed heavily in the resulting quality improvement.

Hi PeteWW,

Yep…the correlation between complexity and defects is so great that one can make highly accurate predictions about quality knowing nothing more than the complexity of the process…education, experience, motivation, & compensation are little more than rounding errors.

I’m a Process Engineer and I teach all kinds of stuff like Six Sigma, Lean, Design for Manufacturability, etc….here’s a hallmark paper on the subject:

http://mml.stanford.edu/publications/2001/DETC2001DFM21194.pdf

benzbaron wrote: People make the japanese out to be technological wizards but their cars have had problems too like having their engines get gunked up and starving the top end for oil. I remember going to the NUMI plant in Fremont where they build toyotas and the japanese had 7 slogans about continual improvement and other GMPs. The only reason the japanese build the quality of cars today that they do is an american taught them about quility control in the 70s all the while the american companies forgot about it.

who taught them about quality in the 70's? Demming in the 50's?

biggest failure toyota has had recently is trying to grow too fast too soon. But.. Had a big 3 try to grow that fast that big, Imagine the quality issues...

Is that the guy who taught them about quality control, Demming? I don't know the whole story, but without quality control the japanese might still be making junk.

It doesn't matter if he taught them quality control in the 50s b/c they didn't get a hang of it until the 70s. My dad and uncle were telling me when they grew up 60s/70s japanese made stuff was a joke. They were the junk manufacturer before Nixon went and opened up china. They made all the junk toys and stuff.

so its Nixon's fault that the chinese are taking over the world and all we get is cheap crap

benzbaron wrote: Is that the guy who taught them about quality control, Demming? I don't know the whole story, but without quality control the japanese might still be making junk. It doesn't matter if he taught them quality control in the 50s b/c they didn't get a hang of it until the 70s. My dad and uncle were telling me when they grew up 60s/70s japanese made stuff was a joke. They were the junk manufacturer before Nixon went and opened up china. They made all the junk toys and stuff.

hey buddy, thems fightin words. show me a car thats better then a 240z.
or, prove to me that a ford 5.0 is a better engineered then an old datsun l series motor. it can't be done. i used to be mad too, i live in the motor city, and the japanese made better stuff and i didn't wanna admit it. but i have come to terms with my ignorance, japan makes better stuff then we do.

Wait, I was just talking about the evolution of japanese cars verses american cars. I have a 22re with 206k miles on it so I'm not about to defend american cars. But you must give credit where credit is due, without american GMPs the japanese would still be building crap.

The first japanese cars they imported to the US were overbuilt and as time went on they lapsed. The Japs realized americans didn't really care about real quality so they started to make sacrifices.

Come on Ford still makes cars that don't use modern suspensions so what's to argue about? Don't even make me start talking about american gaskets, I don't know what the issue is but I've heard many stories about american cars/bikes using crappy paper gaskets. My bike even use crappy gaskets!

Oh yeah, the 240Z is about the coolest datsun they ever made. I don't know what happened to the later models, but I had one of those beat me off the line on my motorcycle.

Hey benzbaron, Just a little piece of advice: If you haven't already, do a timing chain on that 22RE ASAP, and use an aftermarket metal timing chain guide rails instead of OEM plastic. I've seen 2 out of my 2 go bad at 200K. The plastic one I replaced at 200K went out at 290K. engnbldr on ebay is a good parts source. Nixon opened up China. Uncle Bill made the special deal to ship out our manufacturing and jobs to China. W continuted on with Uncle Bill's plan.

People bitch about the XBOX breaking and being a E36 M3ty American product, look at the back of your got dang xbox360 and it'll say made in China. Could there be a correlation between the red rings of death and the quality control of the manufacturing plant over there? I just wanted to eb totally random.

PS3s also encounter their fair share of problems as well and those are built over in Japan.

I don't know where I'm going with this. Same E36 M3 smaller scale maybe?

Don't get me started on PS3s. Went to get my boy a PS3 for his birthday and discovered they've intentionally crippled them so they'll no longer play PS2 games.

Tim Baxter wrote: Don't get me started on PS3s. Went to get my boy a PS3 for his birthday and discovered they've intentionally crippled them so they'll no longer play PS2 games.

Unless you spring for the version that costs $100 more.

Companies think the only way to make money in manufacturing is to cheapen the ingredients used to make the product.

Cheaper parts equal more failures. More failure will make or break a product.

My PS2 was a factory refurbished deal that I got a short while ago for less than $75.00. Scott and Bobby bought theirs brand new and paid $300.00 each for them. Neither Mine nor Scotts has broken during the time we have owned them, Bobbys has been back to Sony three times.

Ford had an award for ideas that led to cost savings.

Remember that cheap lookin' trunk side liner that came out in the late '80's and looks like felt bonded to plastic wrap? That saved Ford $4 million a year and was a HUGE source of customer complaints that it 'looked cheap'. I understand the employee who suggested it got a $1500 bonus.

Then there's those 'garter spring' quick disconnects they used on fuel and A/C lines for years. They were cheap to make and saved time on the assembly line compared to the flare and O ring fittings common at the time. But the fuel line QDs could easily be misassembled and come apart on their own, this led to a fire hazard recall.

The A/C QDs twisted as the engine torqued in the chassis, leading to abrasion of the O rings and thus numerous warranty claims for refrigerant leaks. Ford's answer was to limit the warranty on A/C leaks to 12 months/12,000 miles. No joke. Think that didn't generate a lot of ill will?

I'm not anti cost savings but sometimes it's necessary to weigh the final cost of that savings. That cost is not always readily apparent.

We did the timing chain about 10-15K miles ago. What a job that was, you have to about half disassemble the car, then put it back together. The original crap plastic guides broke and pieces are still somewhere in the oil pan. Tried to get the pan off but couldn't budge the the cross member under it. I used the crappy kraegen replacement parts. I wanted to do the double chain conversion, but for the extra 500$ it would cost said screw it. When we got it back together the distributor was off 5* so we had to go and get it tuned. I guess you are suppossed to turn the engine over twice to tension the chain and we only did it once. The only other issues with the toyota is body rust. They must not have used any rust proofing. The thing still runs believe it or not. Thanks for the suggestions.

I'd like to find the 7 mottos toyota had on the wall at NUMI, it was all about continual evolution, improvement in processes, cost savings, etc. They even had the factory set up so if anyone got behind they could slow the assembly line. Cars are all about quality control of both the assembly, but also the parts. To put it in context, my dad's job is to test fasteners, tapes, epoxies, metal foils, honeycombs, etc for a certain large aerospace company and quality control is the name of the game. That is why a satallite costs a billion dollars, they have to pay someone like my dad to maintain quality.