The Japanese company sent them 3 bags of parts noting: The bag with the full quantity is made to match the provided blueprint, the other two bags contain 1/10th as many parts which are either larger or smaller as requested. May we ask what the purpose of these other parts is?
When they started measuring the parts, they were all identical --- part-way through, they decided that their micrometer must be broken and sent for another --- it revealed that all parts where _exactly_ the right size per the specifications of the drawing.
The context was auto transmissions --- it was found that one source of premature failures was when all parts in a transmission were at the extreme of too small or too large --- on average, the large/small would balance out, but when it didn't that was when there were early (and catastrophic) failures.
The hard bit isn't the process per se, it's executing the process when it would otherwise be easier not to.
It doesn’t mean a thing to have a “stop everything” lever if your workforce doesn’t want to pull it because they don’t give a flying fuck if they ship a shoddy car.
It’s a story told again and again with tons of Japanese products.
Basically, getting to your last sentence: you have the wrong threat model. Making "cars better" is great if what a "car" is doesn't change. But what the market wants is "better cars".
[0] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/more-than-half-o...
It's really bad if you have a sub-brand, like "Hybrids", which has been completely decimated by the (again very real, even if you don't think anyone in Edmonton should buy them) move to electric devices in the market.
Basically: 8 years ago Toyota owned the "ecologically sensitive car buyer" market. And now you might as well flush the Prius brand in the toilet, no one wants them and selling them as "green" relative to a Tesla is a joke.
"Sales of Toyota’s conventional hybrids rose 41% from a year ago, to about 888,000, and sales of its plug-in hybrids were up nearly 90% year-over-year to roughly 39,000."
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/toyota-tm-q3-2023-earnings-g...
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/toyota-motor-north-...
Instead of making up nonsense you could just look at the actual sales numbers. Most manufacturers issue news releases with sales volumes broken down by model.
In Q3 this year, Nissan is in 10th place, with 6000 EV's sold: https://caredge.com/guides/electric-vehicle-market-share-and...
If you look at numbers from a couple years ago compared to now, most of the other manufacturers are way up, whereas Nissan almost looks like they've already plateaued.
Also, apparently the Leaf successor won't go into production until 2026? https://electrek.co/2023/05/19/what-we-know-nissan-leaf-ev-r...
That's crazy if true. What the hell has Nissan been doing?
What's especially annoying is that the high end European cars are ostensibly better made... much more expensive materials, more attention to detail (better rustproofing, cable organization, etc.). They probably actually last longer on average if you maintain them well, but they just have unexpected parts failures extremely often.
Mercedes was a global leader in quality until about the early 90s, but the quality really dropped off, and is markedly lower than other German cars nowadays. Drive and inspect an expensive early 2000s Mercedes, and then a cheap VW Jetta from the same time period… there is no doubt about it, the cheap VW is a higher quality car in every way. Every bolt and fastener is high grade steel, plated with a corrosion preventative , and then also coated with threadlocker that also protects from corrosion. VW then cut quality also around 2011 or so.
So it’s not really cut and dry, you have to look at how each specific car was actually made.
Or maybe they have different approach to beta testing, see say Zelda come out basically flawless and how say Betshesda or many others can deliver their stuff (beta testing months after release with fixes have 1000+ rather basic items).