01-07-2024, 09:22 AM
What is "Quality" ?
The answer is different for everyone.
Quality can be touched & feel, invisible but trustworthy such as the engine starts every time or Quality can be a long lasting product.
Way back in the mid to late 80's the US government wanted to confirm whether it is true that the Japanese has better quality than the US products because even with higher Japanese car prices customers were buying Japanese cars like hot cakes even with the "Voluntary Restriction" by the Japanese producers.
The US gov. subsidize 3 professors from MIT to look into it and after 4 to 5 years of research through every OEM, visiting their plants and suppliers they concluded that the Japanese (lean production technique) were indeed number 1st and North America (Mass production technique) came in 2nd then third the European (Craftsmanship technique) by the Germans.
Also in their research, they concluded that amongst the Japanese OEM they have different level of quality with Toyota on top followed by Honda then Nissan.
If you can buy/rent this book "The Machine That Changed the World" , go for the 2nd edition as it did mentioned the OEM by name.
(ISBN 978-0-7432-9979-4) James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos.
It is a very interesting reading as it discussed about different mentality/approach taken by each OEM when designing a car from ground up.
Note: In order for all Manufacturers to participate in the survey, MIT agreed that the name of the manufacturers were omitted in the report, however, in the 2nd edition the OEM were mentioned by name - I don't know why.
Very interesting reading.
The answer is different for everyone.
Quality can be touched & feel, invisible but trustworthy such as the engine starts every time or Quality can be a long lasting product.
Way back in the mid to late 80's the US government wanted to confirm whether it is true that the Japanese has better quality than the US products because even with higher Japanese car prices customers were buying Japanese cars like hot cakes even with the "Voluntary Restriction" by the Japanese producers.
The US gov. subsidize 3 professors from MIT to look into it and after 4 to 5 years of research through every OEM, visiting their plants and suppliers they concluded that the Japanese (lean production technique) were indeed number 1st and North America (Mass production technique) came in 2nd then third the European (Craftsmanship technique) by the Germans.
Also in their research, they concluded that amongst the Japanese OEM they have different level of quality with Toyota on top followed by Honda then Nissan.
If you can buy/rent this book "The Machine That Changed the World" , go for the 2nd edition as it did mentioned the OEM by name.
(ISBN 978-0-7432-9979-4) James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos.
It is a very interesting reading as it discussed about different mentality/approach taken by each OEM when designing a car from ground up.
Note: In order for all Manufacturers to participate in the survey, MIT agreed that the name of the manufacturers were omitted in the report, however, in the 2nd edition the OEM were mentioned by name - I don't know why.
Very interesting reading.