The Angry White Guy

What you don’t know about Japanese quality

Posted February 10th 2010 at 12:28 am by AWG

Do the honorable thing

Let me let you in on a little secret I’m not surprised at all about this entire Toyota fiasco at all and you want to know why? I use to work for a HUGE Japanese company and I mean big, real big and while I don’t want to say whom the three diamond logo company was for I am about to reveal a little known Japanese industry practice so I will say it would be easier to make a list of the things they didn’t make than the things they do.

I was a international service engineer (sounds fancy doesn’t it – it wasn’t) I traveled domestically and aboard repairing CNC‘s and mechanics on milling machines and robotic assembly lines and from time to time a design flaw or problem would arise that the company knew about but would not tell the customer and keep the issue under wraps. It was worthy of a recall, why not tell the customers? Simple to save face, face and honor are real big deal in the Japanese culture and if the customer complained about the problem they would fix it with no charge looking like the super nice company and preserving their image and face with the customer. While many American companies would come forth and say “Hey we’ve got a problem and need to recall this or that product.” (Mainly to avoid hassles from the Government) many Japanese companies would not as they don’t answer to the US Government on the same level. I’m not saying American companies are without sin on ignoring problem products, I’m just saying I saw it more within Japanese companies for if they reported problems that would bring their “quality image” down to that of Americans products and they didn’t want that, even though the reality is the quality level is about the same.

So hearing all this stuff about Toyota and seeing their damage control commercials on TV – I’m not surprised but I am surprised it has taken so long to come to light. I bet Toyota knew all along about these problems they had but they opted to back burnered the knowledge – now in all fairness I can’t say EVERY Japanese company uses the ‘save face tactic’ of not acknowledging a known problems when discovered, but a great many of the ones I was around did and then like Toyota they run major damage control like this when discovered…

They figured it was easier and cheaper to fix the problem when the customer complained than to take a preemptive repair and recall. After all they are now saying that this recall and repairs may cost Toyota as much as $2 billion or more and several points in market share… whereas if they used their practice of “fix it as it comes” they would save tons of money on the gamble the problem might not fail, not to mention the difficultly a court would have proving it was a widespread problem with Toyota and that they were aware of the issue in advance that should have been addressed. It’s all about deniability and saving face.

You’ll also notice that Honda has issued a bunch of recalls while this massive Toyota recall is going on knowing that right now all eyes are on Toyota as I said it’s all about face in the Japanese culture…. question is who will commit seppuku (hari kari) first? Honda is just trying to slip in under the rug.

Just a thought – notice how this recall started small and is growing day by day and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets larger. Now let me be fair I’m not saying this is 1950′s “Made in [or by] Japan” crap of yesteryear as many of their products are made here and in Japan are of fine quality, but the Japanese maintain quality and management control within the company. Most Japanese products are fine, they just rarely live up to the hype surrounding them because the reality surrounding superior quality is just that – hype and they are no better or no worse than anything made in the states by American companies, they’re just better at public image manipulation. (Don’t believe it who hasn’t had at least one dead Made in Japan Sony PlayStation? I rest my case.)

OH and if your cars accelerator sticks, hit the brakes, put the car in neutral (manual or stick) steer to the curb as the car slows and turn off he engine after it stops… it’s a car not a space ship and if you can’t handle this turn in your license to your local DMV.

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