U.S. Quality Improvement in the Auto Industry: Close but No Cigar

“Stung by Recalls, Ford Creating New Cars More Slowly,” Detroit Free Press, November 24, 1978, p. 12c.

“Challenges Facing the Automotive Industry,” Detroit Free Press, September 28, 1980, p. 1c.

“McDonald Assures Quality is Priority,” Tech Center News, November 17, 1980, p. 1.

See, for example, the statements by Danforth Douglas , Chairman of Westinghouse Electric Corp. in “At the Helm,” Quality Progress (April 1986), pp. 14–17. See also Stratton Brad , “The Refined Focus of Automotive Quality,” Quality Progress (October 1989), pp. 47–50.

Fogel Helen Sedgwick David , “UAW May Bid for GM ‘Quality’ Strikes,” The Detroit News, March 21, 1990, p. le.

Lippert John , “GM is Close to Shifting Productivity into High Gear,” Detroit Free Press, January 2, 1990, p. 3e.

Susumu Watanabe , Microelectronics, Automation and Employment in the Automobile Industry (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1987).

MacDuffie John Paul Krafcik John , “Flexible Production Systems and Manufacturing Performance: The Role of Human Resources and Technology,” paper presented at the Academy of Management, August 1989.

Defects for this data set are calculated using consumer perceptions as reported in J.D. Power's data from the 1985 and 1987 new car initial quality survey.

Stertz Bradley , “Big Three Boost Car Quality but Still Lag,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 1990.

Garvin David , Managing for Quality (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1988), pp. 549–550.

“Still ‘Running Scared,’ Poling Faces New Problems at Ford,” Automotive News, February 26, 1990, p. 51.

MacDuffie John Paul is currently conducting a field study of problem-solving approaches and finds strong supporting evidence for these propositions. He also identifies a number of characteristic behaviors and structures associated with the Japanese approach to problem solving. Personal Conversation, Ann Arbor, MI, February 22, 1990.

Owners of cars produced in a given year are surveyed annually. The score shown in Figure 1 for a given model year is the average of its scores in the first and subsequent years up to a maximum of six years. Thus, to calculate a 1980 model rating, we add up that model's scores for each year through 1986 and divide by 6. 1980 model score = (1981 score + 1982 score + 1983 score + 1984 score + 1985 score + 1986 score)/6

Tanuma Takeshi , “The Key to the Challenge: Black Box Engineering,” paper presented to the University of Michigan, Management Briefing Seminar, August 7–11, 1989, Traverse City, MI.

“Newest Models Make the Gains as Ford and Japan Climb,” Automotive News, February 5, 1990, p. 1.