Lack of CONTROL leads to Recalls!

A lack of “Control” leads to public relation disasters such as seen here.

Just between Toyota and GM 8.6 Million cars are being recalled. It is cheaper to recall your product or is it better to identify problems BEFORE it gets to the customer? Toyota Motor Corp. is recalling more than 6 million vehicles spanning nearly 30 models in the U.S., Japan and Europe for a variety of problems, ranging from air bags not deploying to driver's seats not locking properly.

The top-selling RAV4 SUV, Corolla, Yaris and Matrix are among the vehicles being recalled. It comes on the heels of a similar recall by General Motors involving some 2.6 million vehicles for problems including defective ignition switches that might affect air bag deployment. Toyota reached a $1.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department last month for hiding defects in its vehicles, and it has paid more than $66 million in penalties for delaying the reporting of unintended acceleration problems. Hiding defects indicates that someone in management knew there were defects.  

Here are the two majors problems Toyota has.

The driver's airbag module in the involved vehicles is attached to a spiral cable assembly with electrical connections that could become damaged when the steering wheel is turned. If this occurs, the air bag warning lamp will illuminate. In addition, the driver's air bag could become deactivated, causing it to not deploy in the event of a crash. For the Yaris and the Scion, In the seat rail of the driver seat of the involved vehicles and also the front passenger seat of three-door models, the springs used for the mechanism which lock the seat rail in its adjusting positions could break. This can happen if the seat is adjusted forward and/or rearward with high frequency. This is a component tested for fatigue failure.  If a seat rail spring breaks, the seat may not lock into the adjusted position. If the vehicle is operated with a broken seat rail spring, the seat could move in the event of a crash, increasing the risk of injury to the occupant. Previous seat rails did not exhibit this type of problem. Why the change?

Toyota's RAV 4 one of the cars recalled for Safety Issues

In board rooms all over the world there are executive and managers engaging in Risk Assessment. Should we let a less than safe product or service go out to the public. I would predict that these defects came out during testing or at least early in performance testing. I would also predict that there were changes or variations made to the vendors on certain components and I would add that these questions were discussed with upper management.

The cost of Stopping or even backing up production must outweigh the cost of a recall or worse the injury or death of one customer.

Your thoughts…..